There are two parts to the post, the first is about why the press release for Men at GHC is good and the second is about how to keep the focus on the women even with this press release.
Why is it that I am ok and glad for the press release on the gracehopper.org website that announces this years leading men speaking at GHC?
It is important and inspiring to see prominent men supporting women and serving as strong role models at their organizations across academia and industries.
– Telle Whitney
Any man and every man that want’s to be a <insert male advocate/ally term here> for women I support them and am happy and willing to help them improve their and our chances for true equality. They are role models for the rest of the men in industry to follow suit. This includes having a conversation that is not emotionally charged to answer their questions about how to be an advocate and also listening to them report back on their progress. This is an iterative process.
Every time a man who is working toward equality wants to stand up in front of 12,000 women and the world and tell us how they are improving the environment in which women live and work I want to hear them and I want to give constructive feed back.
I wrote this blog post two years ago and I still believe it is relevant to this day.
Switching gears a bit I want to discuss amplifying the voices of role models you meet at GHC to keep the focus on women.
The biggest reason I’m writing this post now is because while I’ve seen the other news releases made by gracehopper.org I haven’t seen other people tweet about them unless in outrage. What about the scholarship honorees, Manuela Veloso and Clara Shih, Susan Wojcicki and Moira Forbes, Sheryl Sandberg and Megan Smith, this years ABIE Honorees and those from the past.
Have you taken the chance to look at the speaker list this year and the schedule to get excited and promote all of the inspiring women in tech? If the answer is no, then that’s what we should be doing. It is us, the community, who gets to decide the focus of the media around this conference. What we should be tweeting about is all of these amazing speakers regardless of their race, religion, identified gender, etc. If they inspire you then tweet about it, write about it, share it and discuss the future of women in our world!
And lastly please lets stop spreading ridiculous rumors as if they are facts. The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is not the ONLY conference for women.
There are dozens world-wide. Here are the other 2 from the big 3, do a simple search on eventbrite to find even more local to your area:
IEEE WIE International Leadership Conference
SWE The World’s Largest for Women Engineers
What would help boost voices?
- Let’s compile the demographics of the entire list of speakers, of the entire list of award winners and publish them
- Highlight inspirational people making strides in the diversity space in tech
- Promote the voices of change with facts
- Nominate women in tech for the awards
- Encourage women to submit proposals at all the conferences you care about
- Follow above inspirational people on twitter and listen to a diverse set of people
