Gauntlet Toss or Clarion Call: Women, it’s time to step up

Thanks, Melissa. Though I do hope I don’t sound too “preachy” …

Cathy, Well done! You hit the nail on the head, women don’t ask, clearly a generalization, but one that rings true in many cases.  If you have not yet read “Women Don’t Ask” (http://bit.ly/ghSmd), read it now, because it explains why these gender disparties exist.  During nearly 10 yrs on Wall Street,  I saw most of my female coworkers, many of whom were smarter and more qualified than me, leave the industry after a couple of years, frustrated by getting paid less than their male peers, and blaming the old boys club mentality.  I was promoted and offered new opportunities when I not only asked, but asked 10, 20, 30, times! I was professional and polite, but I did not accept no as the final answer. The ‘squeaky wheel gets the oil’, but ONLY if it squeaks loudly over and over.

Yes, female self-promotion carries a stigma, but let’s be honest, guys do it without blinking, so if we want to play with the boys, we better learn to promote ourselves without feeling like it is something dirty. Until each of us asks, not only on our own behalf, but also on behalf of other phenomenal women we would like to see speak at specific events, it is difficult to blame others. Like you said, we need to “kick it up a notch” – each of us knows MANY women we would like to see speak, and potential speakers must be proactive by identifying and targeting conferences, and also by asking other women to speak up, too, to support our collective efforts.

If we become squeaky wheels, not just for ourselves, but also for other women and learn to self-promote without feeling like it is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, conference organizers can choose to listen or not. First, though, we need to eliminate any potential excuses. I love this quote, but forgive me for forgetting who said it: The only answer to the questioned not asked is no.

Great article, Cathy, but there are a few things that I – as a woman who makes her living as a public speaker and writer nowadays – want to add to the equation.

#1. Clearly the woman who ‘crashed and burned’ at Gnomedex didn’t crash and burn because she was a woman, but rather her subject matter didn’t fit (as you described it anyway). However, in my experience ‘minorities’ are plagued with the task of representing their entire group. If a man crashes and burns, it reflects poorly on him or his subject matter. If a woman crashes and burns, somehow it taints the view that we have of women as speakers. When I get up in front of an audience, I feel the double pressure of representing my material/myself and representing womankind. I have learned to carve my own Tarakind niche out of it, but it wasn’t easy and has taken years of both successful and failed attempts at entertaining the audience.

#2. I find it interesting that conference organizers complain women don’t accept or submit. I know TONS of women who both submit AND are dying to be asked (when there isn’t a submission involved), but aren’t. There are oodles of our own industry conferences who have passed me over (even when I’ve offered to speak for free! Free!) and I can point out dozens of women who come to me to ask me to look at their proposals to see why they were rejected at conferences (and they are usually pretty awesome). I’m finally to the point where I’m getting booked fairly regularly for pay, so I no longer have to throw myself on the mercy of conference organizers who don’t pay, but I can point out several women trying to establish themselves who are currently applying and getting turned away. 

That being said, I agree that, in general, women aren’t putting themselves out there as much as they could. But I have seen way more ‘reluctant’ men be pursued to present than women over the years, so it’s not merely women’s faults for being ‘wallflowers’.

If I felt as Tara does — that I represent womankind when I’m up there — I’d probably never speak in public again. I have such conflicts over this whole topic because I’m FAR more concerned about the lack of women *attending* conferences than speaking at them. I’m in the minority for suggesting that if there’s an event we *want* to be heard at, the best way to do that is to use our hard-earned dollars and speak up *as a customer* of the event. Those who pay to attend a conference carry the most weight with most organizers.

I worked my butt off to speak at conferences, so that I could finally stop *paying* for attending them– something I did first, for years. If we don’t place a high enough value on what can be learned from an industry event, why on earth are we fighting to present at one? My knowledge as an attendee served me VERY well in trying to eventually get opportunities to present. I paid extraordinary attention to what attendees were interested in, haunted the session hallways doing my own headcount to see which topics were popular, and listened and learned. For YEARS. 

It’s astonishing to me to see people — men and women — complaining about not being asked to speak at events they’d never spend the time and effort and money to go to. We must support what we value and value what we support.

It doesn’t help when events which *I* find incredibly useful for both learning and inspiration — like SXSW — are sometimes described as big party/networking opportunities. It may be the introvert/geek in me that still thinks it really IS about what you learn in the sessions, and that meeting people and hallway conversations are the icing.

I guess that means I pretty much agree with the post. : )

Hiya, I was a female speaker at Gnomedex - but I wasn’t on the formal program bc I was part of the Ignite session.  I think the other Betsy (Liquid) glosses over a bit of the stage terror issues. I’m tall, half Asian, not a “hawt blonde MBA” , but I have a graduate degree, a technical job since 1995 and a feminist perspective. I’ve spoken internationally at tech conferences.

Even so, it’s not easy for me to get on stage even when asked – it has taken some encouragement and practice and I’ve been lucky that men and women have kicked my butt to get me out there.  A lot of geek girls are so busy WORKING on the tech they aren’t thinking about SPEAKING about the tech (just like a lot of geek guys, but there are unfort. less geek girls to begin with). Not everyone has a marketing,business or PR job that trains them to speak in public or positions them to be visible. Some will need help marketing themselves and a nudge like this blog post. Gentle mentorship and diversity encouragement among conf. organizers goes a long way.

As to Gnomedex, yes the auditorium had more women in it than any tech conference I’ve been to or spoken at, ( w/ exception of Blogher) and when speaking myself I found the audience generally supportive. The fact one speaker had a content mismatch I chalked up to Gnomedex/the speaker pushing the boundaries and seeing what diff topics attendees might be interested in each year. My two cents.

Excellent points, Cathy. I was at Gnomedex this year, and witness the very thing you describe. In addition to saying yes, or seeking oppys out, we need to CREATE the forum as well and be a bigger part of setting the agenda! -LA

As I mentioned in our converation Cathy despite our ongoing outreach our speaker submissions run about 90% men to 10% women. So we go out and find women which results in about 35% of our speakers being women. We don’t have a set number or percentage, our overall goal is to provide that opportunity and achieve diversity in our speakers as well as our attendees.

That diversity goes far beyond gender for us. It also includes ethnicity, point of view, subject matter on your site, etc.