A few weeks ago, DataLensDC founder Kate Rabinowitz called out Data Community DC for not having a single solo lady speaker talk at their meetups.
Now, she's back with an updated — and more disappointing — roundup of the gender breakdown found among speakers from over 114 events in 2016 from 16 D.C. area meetups, and it's equally as upsetting.
From January to the beginning of November, zero women have been speakers at meetups on their own. And, again, the only time a woman took the stage was when she was a part of a multi-person panel discussion.
In short: Of 168 speaking slots or opportunities, Rabinowitz found that only 7.7 percent of those were women so far this year.
"Looking at the results, I was slightly devastated but also in a way affirmed because it put data behind what I was feeling," Rabinowitz told DC Inno.
In her analysis, Rabinowitz only looked at meetup groups that had over 1,000 members and ones that had more of an educational format, such as groups that have speakers talk about a coding language. She also excluded meetups that had restrictions on who could talk, such as DC Tech Meetup, where you usually have to be a startup founder to take the stage. From her pool, Rabinowitz also didn't include "Women's Founders Nights" or similar events.
"Ideally, I want us to be at a space where women speaking at an event isn’t a 'Women’s Speaking Night,'" she said. "It’s just like any other night."
To fix this, Rabinowitz spent her weekend building her new site: WeSpeakToo.org. The idea behind it is a simple one: People from the community can submit a DC Tech lady or nonbinary person's name who might be a good person to have speak at a meetup. That way, the next time tech meetup organizers are looking for female founders, they just have to go to this list and sort by specialties to find a new woman to include in their speaker lineup.
Most people only know people within their given networks, so tech meetup organizers might only think of their friends or people who look like them, Rabinowitz said.
"It both gives a strong message that there are women in data, design, and we are available," she said. "And I want to respect the organizational challenges, and I hope this makes it easier for organizers."
The site launched Monday, and it already has 28 entries listed as Wednesday afternoon. Rabinowitz hopes that the site also lowers the barriers to being a speaker in meetup spaces.
"If there is anything I need people to know, you don’t have to be an expert to be a speaker," she said.
But Rabinowitz doesn't want it to stop here. She sees this sort of audit becoming an annual event. And she says she's met women who have experienced sexism in multiple forms at tech meetups: Sometimes a man flirts with a woman while in a coding session. Or it's just a man at an event who walks up to a woman and assumes she's a beginner.
One day, she hopes to help meetups establish a code of conduct for their meetups, too, and the community built from her new site could help with that.
"A next step I would like to do is look more into that," she said. "As a woman, I have experiences that suggest why we should have a code of conduct, but that might not be top of mind for everyone else."
Image used via CC BY 2.0 — credit WOCinTech Chat
