LarsWestergren's Journal: Railsconf 2007, JavaOne 2007, and women in the industry

A short journal entry about something that pissed me off. Keynote speakers at both Java One and Railsconf 2007 talked about bridging the gender gap - getting more women into the IT industry, and starting by changing ourselves and being more inclusive, accepting or whatever. Excellent point, and I agree totally. But what entertainment do the conferences then provide for us? At Railsconf, we had a "surprise" appearence by this marching band. As they were lining up, the band leader, dressed as a carnival cryer, pointed at one of the girls and shouted in his megaphone - "Everyone, don't look at Emma as she is adjusting her panties! White is not a band colour, you naughty girl!". There was a large monitor in the conference center showing a slideshow of pictures from the conference, and some of the pictures I linked to above appeared there. Ok, so there were one or two guys in the band who also must have used vaseline to get into their minipants, but two wrongs don't make a right to me.

I decided to skip the JavaOne After Dark Bash this year because I was too tired and it is usually too loud. I heard from others who had gone though that things got even more tasteless there with a woman on stage in a metal outfit who used a grinder on herself so the sparks flew. Apparently it went so far she was face down on stage with legs far apart and using the grinder on her crotch. Did the people who arranged the entertainment feel we needed some serial killer mutilation fantasies to spice up the evening, or who was it supposed to appeal to? I don't get it.

Some people will say I'm a prude, and that both shows were tongue-in-cheek burlesque. Ok, maybe, but that excuse only works once or twice, and I see this sort of stuff all the time in the computer industry. Last time I was reading reports from a major gaming conference for instance, about half the articles I found had NOTHING in them about the games, just "reviews" and photos of booth babes. And those were articles by major gaming sites and gaming journals. We might even be worse than the car industry. Most shameful of all, appearently someone at the Rails conference was surreptitiously taking pictures of female participants and putting them on a "Rails chicks" page together with their real names. The people who arranged the conference managed to get it shut it down as soon as they heard about it, to their credit, and also I presume had a stern talking to the guy. I hope he got kicked out and banned from future conferences, if he wasn't he should have been.

JavaOne and RailsConf planners - the next time you are going to lecture us about making this a more welcome place for women, please start with having a private talk to the people who decide the conference entertainment.

well put

[farker haiku]

found this journal entry via http://ola-bini.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com].

+1 insightful

On being a prude

[LarsWestergren]

Some people have commented my journal entry at Ola's blog.

As I thought, some people think I err on the side of being a prude. I think mankind have too many hangups about sex, so it feels uncomfortable to be lumped into the side of oppression. I looked at the homepage of the Extra Action marching band, and they look like a funny crowd. But it was the context of the performance that rubbed me the wrong way. For example, if I'm at home with some friends, I might joke about zombies or getting run over by a car.

great points

[skinfaxi]

Hi, I appreciate your post. It's schizophrenic for conference speakers to wonder "Why aren't there more women here?" when the conference organizers are blatant objectifiers. I don't want to go to conferences that have "booth babes" or porny marching bands or women running grinders on their crotches. That kind of stuff makes it pretty clear that women are not welcome as peers, only as masturbatory material and objects to ogle.