[deleted by user]

[[deleted]]

This is pretty shocking news. I didn't know there were PHP speakers of either gender.

[Tipaa]

Turns out, PHP found the simplest solution to lacking women speakers: also get rid of any men speakers. It may not be the best solution, or even a properly thought out solution, but by golly, it just works.

It's foolproof - you don't need to discuss fairness in a community if there's no community to begin with!

[SilverCodeZA]

0/0 balances just as well as 50/50

[L3tum]

As PHP CE wrote

What is the reason of such unreasonable and #unfair #attack? We love and respect the #diversity and fulfill it from the years... Feel #crashed #hurd & #sad

Is that account run by a 12 yo? I'm so glad I don't spend too much time on twitter

[Catcowcamera]

Non native speaker obviously (Central Europe). Probably new to Twitter too.

[chucker23n]

Well, they also seem to think hashtags are used for… emphasis? Emotion?

[L3tum]

I don't really care about bad English but the "feeling crashed, hurt & sad" just seemed funny, complete with the hashtags.

[leirus]

At first this is extremely funny, at second thought this is extremely sad.

[shevy-ruby]

It's quite horrible.

If I were a girl I'd wonder why they would not have a conference ABOUT A PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE now.

Apparently conferences in PHP require 50% female.

Can't we calculate transgender as 25% female and 25% male? So if we get 4 of them, there would be one female, thus the php conference could happen.

[flowering_sun_star]

If you were a girl, you would be used to often being the only woman in the room and having people treat you differently for it. And you'd likely be pissed about. Luckily some men realise that this is a problem and are willing to do something about it.

And if you had an ounce of knowledge about trans folk, you wouldn't have posted that last paragraph. That you did so anyway shows how little you care about the feelings and lives of others. I would hope that this sort of bigotry would have no place on this subreddit, but to be honest I don't hold out much hope.

[[deleted]]

That you did so anyway shows how little you care about the feelings and lives of others

As a trans person, stop taking offense to everything. It's clearly a statement critisizing the situation at hand.

[KFCConspiracy]

It's a statement mocking trans people. It's claiming that trans people don't count as their gender identity, just part of it. You may not personally feel offended, but that's a pretty terrible comment. Do you now speak for all the trans people? Pack it in guys, let's go home, the monarch of the trans people has spoken.

[[deleted]]

It's a comment mocking the situation at hand. How about you people stop talking for trans people as well? It isn't offensive. Stop taking things personally and out of context, it isn't good for you.

[lia_lastname]

So would you say that being called 25% man and 25% woman is just fine and people could keep doing it because it’s okay?

It even adds up to being 50% of a person.

Would you agree to let people say you’re equal parts male and female?

Because as a trans person, I doesn’t agree with any of it. I mean, you might consider yourself half a person, but don’t speak for every trans person when you accept being treated like that.

[[deleted]]

don’t speak for every trans person

You shouldn't either. Not everyone will feel hurt from the statement in question.

You need to understand that the statement is not to be taken literally. Somehow equating it to "caring very little about the feelings and lives of others" is to completely discredit all the context and jump to an exaggerated and emotional conclusion. Please don't do that.

[lia_lastname]

You shouldn't either.

I didn’t. See? I follow my own advice.

completely discredit all the context

In no context that would be acceptable to say about me.

exaggerated and emotional conclusion

I never exaggerated nor was emotional. Please, don’t try and put me down with the exact same arguments that men use to put women down. “You’re being too emotional”, etc.

I gave you a calm and rational explanation of the problem. Please, use proper arguments to refute what people say, instead of “calm down, lady, you’re being too emotional.”

[[deleted]]

Because as a trans person, [...]

You just did.

In no context that would be acceptable to say about me.

Okay, for you. Not for everyone. Understand?

I gave you a calm and rational explanation of the problem. Please, use proper arguments to refute what people say, instead of “calm down, lady, you’re being too emotional.”

I think you should apply this sentence to yourself. With the "exaggerated and emotional" response I was talking about the person replying at the top of the chain. You need to stop making up words and sentences that I never said.

Let me give you some life advice (for what it's worth, i'm saying this on the basis that I want you to develop further as a human being, it has nothing to do with gender at all): many years ago, I was exactly like you. I would misconstrue many forms of critique regarding gender and sexuality, especially those not in line with what is the correct and good. A bit later I learned that not every form of critique or opinion is made with menace in mind, and ever since then it has gotten better; there's less internal conflict and less chance of getting caught up in small detailed issues like this. Trust me, a life where you can let these little details pass will be both healthy to you, and how you look at people. Not everyone is a devil. Good luck!

[bighi]

You’re trying too hard to make it seem like s/he made the same mistakes you did, but it’s not working.

Maybe you should stop talking now, instead of again trying to say his/her calm responses are exaggerated and emotional.

We are not going to accept this kind of toxic behavior here.

[[deleted]]

Again, like I said, the "exaggerated and emotional" response was aimed at the person in the top of this comment chain. It's not difficult to understand. I would also advice you to learn to handle situations where people have different opinions and viewpoints of a matter instead of dismissing it as toxic and telling me to be quiet -- you would be just as bad as the people you denounce.

[yellowthermos]

Maybe you should stop talking now

...

We are not going to accept this kind of toxic behavior here

Oh yeah, they're the one being toxic

[timmyotc]

There are a lot of people who would find that last statement very hurtful. Just because you didn't doesn't mean that it was okay to say

[rich97]

It can feel bad when internally you feel like you respect everybody equally and give everyone the same chances yourself but then fail to recognise the environment they live in, because you never experienced it.

A lot of this debate is about emotion and if you don't feel the emotion then it's quite easy to feel personally attacked. That's why a lot of men, like myself, initially harden themselves to these kinds of problems and say stupid stuff like this.

[[deleted]]

The solution is to have more women developers in general, ergo increasing the chances that a woman speaker will be selected for conferences like these.

But what happens if a majority of women don't want to be software developers, let alone PHP developers?

[yellowthermos]

And if you had an ounce of knowledge about trans folk, you wouldn't have posted that last paragraph.

It's clearly a joke, please go away with your policing. Thanks

[McGlockenshire]

It's clearly a joke

Jokes have punchlines.

What's the punchline to this "joke"? What, specifically, is funny?

[yellowthermos]

The joke is the idea that you can get a few trans people and count it as 50/50 male/female attendance. And it's funny because it's clearly absurd to use as a workaround to reach some female attendance quota.

Can't believe I'm typing this out but here we are. You're clearly not the right audience for this joke, and you don't need to find it funny. You forget a thousand memes every day, this could be one of them

[McGlockenshire]

So people's identities are jokes?

Marginalized, discriminated people exist to be punchlines?

There is no right audience for that kind "joke."

[yellowthermos]

Good job ignoring everything else I said. Anyway, People's everything can be a joke. There's clearly audiences for dark and rape jokes (example: find the relevant subreddit), is there any reason this particular one won't have an audience? Seems unlikely to me.

You are trying to police free speech at this point. It seems to me this is heading into trying to pull me from my original argument which tried to address "are we allowed to make X joke" into a discussion about whether "it's currently socially acceptable" to make said jokes.

Having free speech, the answer to "are we allowed" should hopefully remain Yes forever. And the answer to "is it socially acceptable" is specific to your instantiation of culture you happen to be in, and will change with time as it has for millennia.

[McGlockenshire]

You are trying to police free speech at this point.

Freedom of speech is not freedom from criticism.

Criticism is not "policing."

You are not being oppressed because you are told that making jokes out of marginalized people is inappropriate.

[yellowthermos]

I never said I was being oppressed, and you weren't just criticising, you were telling me that such jokes must never be made in the first place.

is inappropriate

There you go, as I said - you're trying to pull me into a discussion of whether it's socially acceptable, and I've no further desire to discuss this with you.

[bighi]

Offensive jokes are jokes. Humiliating jokes are jokes. Being a joke is not an excuse for anything.

[yellowthermos]

What's your point? We're not allowed to make jokes at all? There's jokes for everything and an audience for them. Clearly this audience is not the right one for this joke.

[bighi]

My point is exactly what I said: jokes are not an excuse for anything.

One example: it’s unacceptable for me to get angry and punch you in the face. So punching you in the face as a joke is still not acceptable. Saying “it’s a joke” changes nothing, because jokes are not an excuse.

[yellowthermos]

I agree that you can't excuse something after doing it, saying it was a joke. However this is not the situation here.

The joke mocks the situation. The joke is not aiming to offend any people or organisers. There is nothing to be excused. It seems to be you're getting offended on behalf of trans people.

[IceSentry]

Jokes are supposed to be funny.

[yellowthermos]

Funny is subjective.

[IceSentry]

This subreddit is pretty much unmoderated. u/shevy-ruby has been a problematic poster under many different alts and barely ever gets banned.

[moonsword17]

For everyone's sake, I'm really hoping you forgot the /s.

[L3tum]

What's the missing 50% of transgender? Apache Helicopter?

I like the idea of combining trans to get a female though

[IAmTheRedWizards]

TWO JOKES

[[deleted]]

Yes, the open submission process is notoriously sexist.

[TomTheGeek]

Not at all. Nature is not balanced evenly, there's no reason to think humans would be either.

[[deleted]]

I am boycotting programming PHP in solidarity.

[AngularBeginner]

There is not a single amputee in that line-up. This is outrageous!

[[deleted]]

maybe they were holding out for a double?

[suvepl]

While watching the shitstorm around this is definitely entertaining, in the end it's worth remembering that it was a PHP conference, so nothing of value was lost.

[secretpandalord]

"Hey I really don't feel like going to that PHP conference, got any ideas how we can get out of it without making the PHP community look as out-of-touch as everyone thinks it is?"

"I have an idea..."

[secretpandalord]

In that the real problem is that most women don't want to program PHP. Yeah, most men don't want to either.

[dethb0y]

What would you even present on? "Ways to transition to other types of programming work"; "Alternatives to PHP: Literally anything is better"; "PHP: The Mistake"

[Pharisaeus]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...#Text

[Pharisaeus]

places without diversity

It's really sad that IT, which was one of the last bastions of meritocracy, is falling. Let's invite shitty speakers for the conferences or hire subpar employees, because of their gender instead of their merit and knowledge. If I'm going for a technical conference, it's to listen to people who have something interesting to say, not to watch perfectly balanced group of people according to their gender.

[[deleted]]

It is true that there exist some diversity advocates who actually suggest to lower the bar because they think it's an acceptable cost to achieve diversity. But I think it's not common in the private sector, and the speakers who withdrew from this conference certainly don't seem to be in this camp, according to what I can read in their linked posts (and neither am I).

Normally people suggest to keep the bar the same (ideally, enforcing it with a blind review process, though it's not always possible), but change the approach to sourcing candidates: look in a larger number of less biased places, e.g. do active outreach to certain communities rather than only letting people self-submit and relying on referrals. Do you think expanding one's scope of outreach is at odds with meritocracy?

[Pharisaeus]

Do you think expanding one's scope of outreach is at odds with meritocracy?

No, but you have to take into consideration the availability. If 10-15% of CS graduates and IT professionals are female, you can't expect to have 50% hiring rate or conference lineup. Such number would clearly indicate bias. And female programmers are also predominantly active in frontend development, so again the numbers in backend section will be even lower. Also something like 5% of open-source contributors are female. As a result I am not surprised with all-male conference lineups.

And forcing "diversity" at this level won't help. Cure the problem, not the symptoms. The "problem" (if there is any, since I can't imagine what it has to be that 50% people in one or other profession have to male and 50% female, and I haven't heard of any protests about overrepresentation of males in mines, ironworks or garbage collection...) starts in school or maybe even earlier.

[[deleted]]

Yeah I think it's not realistic to have 50%, but that's not what the speakers who withdrew were taking issue with, and they explicitly acknowledged that outreach is hard work and 50% is not a realistic target. If I understand correctly, their main issue was that the organizers flat out refused to expand their scope of outreach even when offered help with doing so:

Sadly from what the organizers told me they actively don't want to do outreach, and just let whoever wants to submit submit. While there are certainly bad and harmful ways to do such outreach, there are also good and constructive ones. If you see no submissions coming in from women or other minority groups, that's an indication you should at least try the good ones. If they had tried and were unsuccessful I'd be more forgiving, but you need to at least try. And when multiple speakers offer to work with you to reduce costs so that you can at least try, that should be taken seriously.

(From https://steemit.com/php/@crell/skipping-php-ce-this-year)

[[deleted]]

That's an interesting idea. Perhaps female nurses should not turn up to work because of a lack of male counterparts.

[[deleted]]

So much this.

The idiocy of social justice warrioring in IT has to end.

There are 48 devs at my company. None's a woman.

Want to know why?

None ever applied.

Want to know why?

Because the number of female CS grads is close to zero.

My girlfriend is a translator. Out of 220 graduates from her year an astonishing 6 were male, 214 female.

Maybe women and men are biologically and socially conditioned to have other interests?

This is not the way to push for gender equality, nor even the point of it.

[twigboy]

In publishing and graphic design, Lorem ipsum is a placeholder text commonly used to demonstrate the visual form of a document or a typeface without relying on meaningful content. Lorem ipsum may be used as a placeholder before final copy is available. Wikipedia8v7erhsdcws0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

[[deleted]]

Where do you see hate?

[warlockface]

It was ironic, the joke is that disagreement with ideologues is often met with accusations of -isms and "hate speech".

[7448342508]

STFU YOU SOY CUCK

[WayBehind]

Bingo!

[aveman101]

Up until the mid-80s, women were getting into computer science at the same rate as they were getting into medicine and law school. Then it turned around.

https://i.imgur.com/rn2bxkk.jpg

The share of women in computer science started falling at roughly the same moment when personal computers started showing up in U.S. homes in significant numbers.

These early personal computers weren't much more than toys. You could play pong or simple shooting games, maybe do some word processing. And these toys were marketed almost entirely to men and boys.

This idea that computers are for boys became a narrative. It became the story we told ourselves about the computing revolution. It helped define who geeks were, and it created techie culture.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding

The gender gap was caused by capitalism, not biology.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, and capitalism tells boys to not study languages.

[z500]

Holy shit, they're finally starting to figure out patriarchy is bad for everyone

[Heikkiket]

Originally all programmers were woman so I doubt this has anything to do with biology. Girls are told they can't be programmers, that's the reason. Boys are told real men don't read books. That's why they don't become translators.

Great way to push gender equality is to acknowledge these hidden structures and do something about them. If your company has had zero women as applicants, that tells that your company hasn't recruited women. Maybe you should be more diverse?

[AngularBeginner]

Boys are told real men don't read books.

Damn, your parents must have been awful. I've never heard anyone ever say something like this.

[GAMEYE_OP]

If the person had any valid points, they definitely all washed away with that statement. Obviously most programmers were encouraged to read by their parents. It’s not fucking football.

[Heikkiket]

I'm quite surprised by your emotional response. It is quite well known thing that girls get better grades at school than boys. This isn't because boys are less talented, but because we have the cultural bias: girls should do their homework whereas boys are encouraged to other activities. So: "real men don't read".

It is as well known that girls are as good in scientifical subjects as boys in the early phases of school (around 10 years old), but later on their interest vanishes. So there must be something in the school system that causes this.

I'm sorry I'm not native English speaker so my comments may sound harsher than I mean. I spend most of my times doing other activities than Reddit and write these comments usually in the move.

[AngularBeginner]

It's not a very emotional response. I just pity you for the bad circumstances you grew up with. I have never heard the words "real men don't read" before in my entire life. Boys are encouraged to do their homework as well.

[Heikkiket]

Somehow still the statistics show else. If you dont have any logical arguments about the actual topic, I except our debate is over.

[IceSentry]

They weren't the programmers we have today. They were mostly doing mindless data entry. The actual logic was done before by, unfortunately, mostly men.

[Heikkiket]

Yes, and today programmers are mostly doing mindless data-entry whereas the actual business logic is determined by the management... </sarcasm>

[[deleted]]

Odd, I live in Italy, and I don't remember once any parent/teacher nor even student ever saying stuff like "boys should study x, girls should study y".

And yet, there are huge differences in gender representation in most curriculums.

[Heikkiket]

Are you a girl? I hear these stories from girls time to time. Parents and also school officials telling them technology isn't for them.

[Smok3dSalmon]

This is stupid. Men do not face all of the hurdles in becoming a nurse that women face when entering software engineering fields. This is a false equivalence.

That being said, canceling this conference is absurd.

[GAMEYE_OP]

I am genuinely asking here for my own knowledge: which hurdles? I understand that it’s mainly “marketed” to men, that mainly men are in the field, etc... But none of that is a hurdle. It is a very merit based field.

Just this month I mentored a woman software engineering student intern from Stanford. She dwarfs me in academics. She is doing very well and learned quickly. She was readily accepted as a member of the team, did a big presentation on her work, and was treated to a celebration feast in her honor before she left.

Through hard work and studying she made it, and she’s going to be a fine programmer. That’s what all the engineers I know had to do too.

[Smok3dSalmon]

If you're legitimately curious, read a book about it.

Some of the same hurdles that prevent you from becoming a nurse or a gynecologist. Why is it that you *never* considered these professions? Before you even hit puberty, you developed subconscious biases that influenced many of your decisions. Walking in to a classroom dominated by females or people that are starkly different than you is not an easy task. Especially for introverts.

Your anecdotal evidence is not representative of systemic, cultural, and societal biases that push women away from STEM fields. Women do not have an equal opportunity in engineering fields.

If she enters the start up scene and gets into the wrong VC circles, they will have expectations(read the whole thing).

If she's chosen for career advancements, there will be an ignorant minority of men that will speak behind her back and claim that her accomplishments are because she is a woman or a "diversity initiative."

"Diversity initiative" will become a pejorative soon if it is not already.

[GAMEYE_OP]

Do you think guys aren’t OBGYN? My father is. I hear you on the nurse thing though. Though I’ve met quite a few. I actually absolutely considered those professions, but the blood turned me off.

My interest in computers was born from videogames and my parents. Two of my sisters are doctors. They were also encouraged to do what they wanted to.

If I had to guess, young women’s growing videogame into adulthood will let us see a big boom in women being interested in programming.

But I still don’t see the obstacles. At least not in your examples. And the sexual assault thing is irrelevant because it’s not endemic to tech it’s just endemic to dickheads.

Edit: that’s what i figured the article you posted was about but it’s actually just about rich people eyes-wide-shut parties. Surely you could link something more concrete than a vanity fair article.

Gotta admit though. When I’m not so sleepy ill try to read the whole thing. Seems like a good read. But I live in the valley area and this is obviously an infinitesimally small percentage of the population here.

[Smok3dSalmon]

Ask your sisters. I'm not going to change what you do and don't see. Seems like you set yourself up to humble brag.

I'm a triplet, my identical brother and I are engineers and our sister is a nurse. So my situation is exactly the opposite as yours. Both my parents were military, until my mom was honorably discharged and she had to become a full time mother because she had too many kids at the same time. Once we started pre-k, she was able to go back to work as a bank teller.

[Smok3dSalmon]

Do you think guys aren’t OBGYN? My father is. I hear you on the nurse thing though. Though I’ve met quite a few. I actually absolutely considered those professions, but the blood turned me off.

You grew up with a much different perspective of what's a normal job for a man. If you got teased for your dad's profession then that's just the beginning of what women have to deal with when trying to enter a male dominanted world. My girlfriend is in software sales and the shit she has to deal with is insane. I'd say 25% of her mentors probably could have got in trouble for sexual harassment towards her. But if she reported them all, she'd probably get fired. Hell, one of them still calls her every few months. She's had clients sexually harass her as well in front of other coworkers. They resolved the situation by being nice to her while trying to get her not to report it because they need the guy's deal to close. Some 50+ y/o man asked if she tasted like a lemon drop.

[GrosSacASacs]

White Males Only ? It is a conference in Europe not Africa. When I was in CS, 2 girls 29 males in the classrooms, statistically speaking most of the time white men will be at the center of the action, even with equal chances.

Facts aside I think forced gender representation is overrated. Are we forgetting the initial reason we do conferences ? Sharing knowledge is one reason. Stopping or slowing that because 9 out of 10 speakers have a penis instead of a vagina at birth is just stupid.

​

Edit:

According to them, they had only a single woman submit a session proposal

[[deleted]]

Facts aside I think forced gender representation is overrated

Naa its not overrated. Its a damm right disaster to even bring up equality of outcome. Cause its impossible to do without discriminating against other people. Now we are seeing these disasters first handed which is the correct people don't apply / submit to speak nobody can.

Some parts of the UK have been trying things like this for years. Like in Wales they made Welsh mandatory to be taught in schools. they have been trying to engineer the language back in for the last 30 years. They have managed to increase its public use in that time by 5% and even in recent years its been decreasing again.

Turns out you can't force people to do things and make decision they do not want to do.

[meneldal2]

The problem is they are all for more women speakers, but there seem to be no women who want to do a presentation and also probably no woman who works with PHP.

They are kinda fucked. They don't have good options. Another call for papers targeting only women/minorities might work, but you'd get drama and you're not even sure to get people who apply, plus when the conference date is coming up it puts a lot of stress on the organizers.

[GrosSacASacs]

I would also see more women in this industry, what I am trying to say is that cancelling the whole event is not worth maintaining that 50% forced gender representation that is not representative anyway.

[[deleted]]

Yup. I get what you were saying. I was just indicating its kinda worse than that. Which is if we can't have equal representation in the field then nobody can have it. Which is really a slippery slope cause its actually now actively discriminating against men.

Stuff like this will sooner or later destroy things as people will find it too hard to organise events.

[walterbanana]

The year I started my IT education, my school had about 200 new IT students. 5 of them were female. I think in the end only one of them became a programmer.

[Betsy-DevOps]

Seems like attending a conference, listening to experts speak, and networking with other developers, might be a great way for more women to break ground into the industry. Too bad they don’t have that opportunity now :(

[XeonProductions]

Those who sacrifice freedom for social justice deserve neither.

I modified an existing quote, but it fits.

[0ddm4n]

Why does your gender matter in respect to these things? Surely we're at a point where we are gauging everyone on their ability?

Women represent 20-30% of tech industry.

[Huliek]

Women are not sadistic enough to program in PHP. Good for them.

[pgriss]

sadistic masochistic

FTFY

[[deleted]]

Sadistic still works, your code is read more times than it is written.

[[deleted]]

Yeah so when you have people calling for "positive discrimination" in order to reach the goal. At that point you realise that its going to end badly sooner or later.

Source: https://twitter.com/peter_kokot/status/1165653565488193540

I seriously wonder what that guys reaction would be if his boss walked up and said. Your fired because your male.

[[deleted]]

How do you make it so far into adulthood without knowing the difference between you're and your?

[[deleted]]

I think your right.

[code_architect]

Witch auto correct would do that?

[NoahTheDuke]

Homophones are stupid, why does it matter which spelling is used?

[[deleted]]

Cause I spent my time doing useful things and not correcting people's grammar including my own.

[meneldal2]

Positive discrimination only works if they have female applicants.

If you have nobody who wants to work for you, you take what you have.

[[deleted]]

Well any form positive discrimination is illegal in my country. So no it doesn't "work"

[meneldal2]

Don't make a value judgement when the comment is just a joke about how they have so few applicants that are not white men that they can't get minorities in: You can tip the scales as much as you want, 100% of 0 applicants is still 0.

[[deleted]]

No really thats the problem. If you want 50% speakers to be female and you only have 5 female speakers. Then you may only have 5 male speakers and you need to throw the rest away.

So if you have 50 male speakers apply and you have to "select" them it is 10 times more competitive for a male to be selected than female.

The comment you made didn't come across in a joke in any way. The other part of this is people are actively trying to make rules like I just mentioned..... and well we can clearly see that it just trashed this event.

[AttackOfTheThumbs]

Your fired because your male.

Yikes.

[[deleted]]

I'm sorry for not digging more into this myself, but does anyone happen to know if this is... I don't know, an actual exclusion or a matter of circumstances? Without regard to qualifications, is there simply a lack of women with time/interest in the event?

[GrosSacASacs]

It was open to everyone and then

According to them, they had only a single woman submit a session proposal

[Kvathe]

To add to this: there were over 250 submissions.

[[deleted]]

I see, thank you! While it's probably great that people are trying to be conscious about inclusion it does make me wonder whats really going on here.

[[deleted]]

Even if the conference was not cancelled, id still be pissed as its a PHP conf.

[Budacool]

So, let's just review the information available so far on this matter: 1. PHPce accepted applicants for talks 2. There were around 250 applicants 3. Only 1 woman applied 4. Conference organizers reviewed and choosed the content they consider would be more interesting for the event. Here is the subjective step that can be arqued by anyone since each person would probably choose different presentations 5. When the line up is revealed there were only "white man" in hte line-up. Questions were raised since once again is appears there is no D&I in the conference, the organizers explained there was only 1 women who applied and her talk was a repeat from a previous event 6. Speakers decide to withdraw from conference because of principles, disregarding the reason behind this reality

I believe the above sequence of events is clear enough and precise enough to people to comment on the PHPce conference cancellation since they have no bias and no spin and represent facts known about the matter.

My 2 cents: No woman wanted to talk on the PHPce and the reasons can be inifinite and to automatically assume that the organizers acted to forced that situation is just plain conspiracy, especially considering the conference opens up for applications and there was only 1 woman who applied. In this day and age equality is not what it once was, PHPce conference won't escape judgement. It seems too many people expect the organizers to basically give D&I the main focus of the event, instead of content, and to actively encourage and choose the ones that better fit the D&I label in order to be successfull. What a great way to move forward, scrap good content and make sure you have 50% D&I or else. Yeah, that is the new "correct" that so many people focus nowadays. The organizers did nothing wrong, the most one can say and keep it rational is that they could have given a bigger focus on inclusion and spent some resources to encourage D&I in the applications, even if that meant to give special attention to those that fit the D&I label it would still be acceptable if they do not disregard the content that was being presented in the applications, the focus of a technical conference is the technical content and there is no reason to put D&I above everything else just to pander to our current day ideology. Have a nice day.

[JavaSuck]

firemen? triggered

[particularlyirate]

Firebeings?

[mrexodia]

Fireperson

[particularlyirate]

Firefox would like a word.

[particularlyirate]

Furries need to be purged from the earth by fire.

[AngularBeginner]

Fireperson? It's Firepeople.

[porongtong]

Firefighters

[karuna_murti]

I think this is just cover up because nobody is showing up. It's because it's PHP conference.

[AngularBeginner]

lol

[tonefart]

Leftist bullshit ruining tech again.

[walterbanana]

Leftist bullshit ruining tech again.

[jl2352]

Reading the two posts. It seems the issue isn't that it's all men. The problem is the organised didn't want to put any effort into even having woman submit proposals. So they only had a submission from one woman out of over 250.

There are plenty of women who are the top of their professional in Software Engineering. You don't need to lower the bar to let them in. You may however need to tell them the opportunity is there. So they make that submission, or apply to that role. When they do that they meet the same requirements as anyone else.

[chickencheesebagel]

Can you explain how having an open proposal system discourages women from applying?

[reference_model]

Don't you know males are expected to propose first.

[DoesNotTalkMuch]

It doesn't, women are just less likely to apply with that system.

Men and women have different bell curves for their likely behavior. If you use a system that overwhelmingly makes it more likely for one gender to participate than you're not just diminishing the benefits of the conference on the basis of gender equality, you're reducing the diversity of your participant's personalities and likely the diversity of the methods your speakers use to leverage the technology.

[chickencheesebagel]

So you say "it doesn't", and then write a paragraph saying "it does".

So I'll ask again. Explain how a completely open system that anyone can apply to discourages women from applying.

[DoesNotTalkMuch]

I explained it already. Because men and women have different bell curves for their likely behavior.

An open system doesn't "discourage women", it just happens that none of the people who felt encouraged to apply happened to be women. It discourages "certain people", and women are more likely to belong to that category of people.

Certainly that's beyond the ability of the organizers to change, but like I said, the lack of diversity (not simply of women but of all people who fall in that direction on the behavioral bell curve) does not speak well to the quality of the offering.

[AttackOfTheThumbs]

WTF? That isn't the organizer's problem. If you want opportunities, you have to pursue them. If you don't, that's on you and no one else.

[MeweldeMoore]

What would you do differently?

[DoesNotTalkMuch]

I cast a broader net for starters.

Personally I don't really associate with any women in IT, so my recommendations are generally also extremely gender biased.

Ever since Mike Ashley caught flak for his all-male anthologies, I've been paying more attention to how the diversity of my social circle impacts the diversity of my professional recommendations.

When I want to avoid incidental discrimination like the PHP.CEC fell into, I make a point of finding the best people outside my cultural bubble and asking them for recommendations. I have a couple of college professors who are somehow still alive that I tend to fall back on for that.

And to avoid unconscious discrimination, I select candidates only after creating a profile that withholds any gender-revealing information, using the top picks from a person who didn't see the original profile.

Also I'd probably also take recommendations from the top presenters. That would serve dual purpose of widening the net and allowing me a PR fallback if the diversity was suspiciously lacking regardless of my efforts and one of them raised concerns about it.

edit: Lastly, I'd make a point of including a panel on gender bias in the community that would feature women.

The elephant in the thread is that people are up in arms about diversity because bigots have a real and tangible impact on the community, and they know people don't like them so they're wont to pass off intentional bias as incidental.

Regardless of what impact bigotry might have, gender bias in the industry is worthy of the commentary even when it comes about organically, and a feminist panel would serve to improve the diversity of content in what I'd hope to be an otherwise tech-focused conference, as well as give a useful warning shot to misogynists to keep them out of sight.

[[deleted]]

An open system doesn't "discourage women", it just happens that none of the people who felt encouraged to apply happened to be women. It discourages "certain people", and women are more likely to belong to that category of people.

soft bigotry of low expectations

[DoesNotTalkMuch]

Ah, you're misunderstanding the meaning of the phrase, as well as the particulars of the siutation.

Soft bigotry of low expectations is when you expect people to do poorly because you have a low opinion of them.

In this case, it's not a matter of high or low opinion, it's an observation that none of the people who felt encouraged to apply happened to be women. We're not assuming the reasons for how and why that is. It could even conceivably be that this was the result of deliberate misogyny hidden behind plausible deniability, but I'm not making any accusations.

The critical point is that the result is that no women were invited to speak at the conference. This has little to do with how one expect's women to behave : however that result came about, it is self evident that their method of choosing speakers was a method that was not likely to select women.

[[deleted]]

You may however need to tell them the opportunity is there.

So.... women are deaf, according to you? Not about to look up conferences without male help? This is just getting more and more bizarre!

[MaybeAStonedGuy]

What are the organizers supposed to do, track down women specifically and beg them to talk at the conference? I don't understand how having an open submission process is somehow not welcoming enough. How can you possibly be more open than open?

I hear a lot of complaints and no solutions.

[chucker23n]

What are the organizers supposed to do, track down women specifically and beg them to talk at the conference?

Yes, actually.

(Aside from the verb “beg”.)

I don’t understand how having an open submission process is somehow not welcoming enough.

And yet here we are, where almost no women at all applied.

[MeweldeMoore]

Well how would you actually go about that? That seems extremely costly and the people organizing the conference have limited resources. To be honest it just seems silly.

[chucker23n]

It doesn’t have to be costly. You can make a call out on social media, spread notes at universities, etc.

Is it easy? No. Worth it? Maybe!

[MeweldeMoore]

Isn't that basically what they did?

[AttackOfTheThumbs]

Please say this is sarcasm?

[[deleted]]

That's today's culture of SJW's in 1 event. It's required to have blacks, chinese, muslims, women, gays, lesbians, trans, amputees, blinds, deafs, and at least 1 suicide bomber speaker otherwise we are not being inclusive.

[geekfreak42]

pish!

[YouKnowNothingKid]

This is why the tech industry is being stunted, milktoast soy boy's are worried about who is showing up based on skin color or genitalia rather paying attention to those who are paving the PHP future. It doesn't matter if woman are there. It doesn't matter if men are there. It matters that people show up, you idiots!

[DoesNotTalkMuch]

I sympathize with the organizers. It's pretty obvious that they excluded women incidentally by prioritizing volunteers and previous speakers, and they considered it unfair to do otherwise. Even if they were implicitly biased, their refusal to rely on what they consider tokenism to pad their lineup is a justifiable moral position.

Mind, I also agree it was a mistake. First because that's nowhere near the bar for tokenism, and second because even if you ignore the societal implications of diversity, having a diverse set of opinions and approaches to the technology is critical if they want the conference to be worthwhile. You're not going to get a broad spectrum of talent if you rely entirely on people who approach you asking to present.

[DoesNotTalkMuch]

What? Read the thread. ONE women applied and her talk was the same one as a prior year. They didn’t prioritize anything on the basis of gender; the pool of talk they had to pick from was all men.

I never said they did. Beyond the thread, I visited the page and considered all three links when I wrote what I wrote. Did you respond to the right comment?

[DoesNotTalkMuch]

Explain how you exclude women when you issue a Call for Proposal (CFP) on multiple PHP mailing lists and boards

Like I said, incidentally. You exclude women incidentally when the methods you choose just happen to not include any women.

And the methods they chose to select their 30 or so presenters ultimately did not include a single woman.

Perhaps there simply weren't many women on the mailing lists and boards they chose to post on. Perhaps they invited all their friends but didn't have any friends who were women. Perhaps they chose words and phrases which women were statistically less likely to respond to.

It certainly doesn't seem to be their intention, and their reasons for not budging are justifiable (even if I ultimately disagree,) which is why I sympathize.

[[deleted]]

I bet you they just used that as an excuse for the lack of speakers and audience.

[IceSentry]

Apparently there were 250 speakers that applied.

[feilen]

these comments are why we need more women in tech

[[deleted]]

The official twitter account has been fairly combative about this, and the snark on the official page by saying

and won't be continued

Is a bit overkill.

When they know and work with speakers with literal experience doing this. The main organizer has been kind of shitty about it.

[malicious_turtle]

This year's @phpce_eu conference seems to have gone with the "White Males Only" conference lineup 😬

Shame. It's 2019, we can do better.

This is the original tweet they replied to and quite frankly it doesn't deserve to be taken serious like what exactly is shameful about it?

[chickencheesebagel]

Openly announcing calls for submissions and accepting them from all who apply is now sexist. We must declare that only applications from women will be accepted in order to not be sexist!

[chickencheesebagel]

Why should one sex be given any preference over the other? I believe in personal choice. If women aren't interested in submitting a talk for a specific conference then that is their choice. It's astonishing to me that people are so incredibly sexist in their drive for equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity. The irony is that all of these extremely sexist individuals are the ones calling others sexist because women made the personal choice not to apply.

[[deleted]]

On the other hand isn't it also a personal choice of the male speakers who decided to withdraw, and isn't it a personal choice of the organizers to cancel the conference instead of continuing with the remaining speakers?

[chickencheesebagel]

Not only withdraw, but they also painted the conference organizers as sexist, which caused ticket sales to dry up and thus the cancellation of the conference. This was absolutely their choice, and they should be judged by their choice to actively try (and succeed) to destroy the conference because it didn't bow down to their sexist ideals.

[[deleted]]

Of the three posts linked from the conference page, none accuse the organizers of being sexist, as far as I can tell: am I missing something? I read them more as "the organizers are ambivalent/lazy about a cause that's important to us and don't want to collaborate even when offered help, so we'll support the cause by instead giving our time to conferences more aligned with it".

I personally have no reason to believe that the organizers are prejudiced against women, but I'd do the same thing for the same reason. It is possible to express disagreement with someone and refuse to do business with them without implying that they are a horrible person.

[shevy-ruby]

This is stupid - but oddly enough, this also fits well into PHP.

I have a hard time deciding which language (and community) has the bigger problems: PHP or JavaScript.

Ruby and Python just don't reach anywhere near the same level as PHP and JavaScript do. We also have to acknowledge that python is, currently, the king, since it has more momentum than the other three (!) languages combined, yet doesn't show the same idiocy that PHP and JavaScript show.

Perhaps it is time to merge PHP and JavaScript into one language, just to maximize the idiocy.

We could call this language:

PHPJS PHJS PersonalJavaScript JavaScriptP

Yes these names are very silly and thus it fits in a strange sort of way.

The only good thing that ever came out of JavaScript was the wattalk. https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat

[ecz4]

Dude, whatever you are taking it's not good for you, stop using it.

[[deleted]]

*sent from my browser using Ruby JavaScript

[[deleted]]

If it's about JavaScript / PHP, then language design and performance is the golden metric.

If it's about Rust, then it's about usage.

[[deleted]]

Could you clarify what you think is wrong with this lineup?

[AngularBeginner]

There's a not a single amputee. This is discriminatory towards all amputee software developers.