[Chennaipy] Diversity in Chennaipy

[Shrayas rajagopal]

On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 9:10 AM, Kiran Gangadharan <me at kirang.in> wrote:
> While PyLadies could be a good initiative, something like that makes
> sense if we
> can identify key people who can help develop such a community and take
> it from there.
> With the kind of audience that we presently have, I don't think it's
> feasible to think
> about a seperate group for now.

I agree here. This I feel is the biggest problem with setting up a
separate group. The lack of people to run it itself.

On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 11:25 AM, James Mortensen
<james.mortensen at synclio.com> wrote:
> While I have mixed feelings about a separate group, there already is a group
> in Chennai that caters to women, via LeanIn Circles, inspired by Sheryl
> Sandberg's book, Lean In.
>
> Many of my colleagues are in this list, including the only two women who
> attended the Python workshop in February.  I have reached out to their group
> founder to invite them to participate in our group at the end of the month.
>
> http://leanincircles.org/circle/thesherylnetwork

This sounds great James. Thank you so much for your effort :)

On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 7:25 AM, Abhishek <bigbeliever at gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

> tech culture of geek
> glorification.

I really like that you brought this point up. I've been having quite a
few thoughts about this too. Everything is just aligned towards
portraying only the males as "geeks" and I hardly see a campaign or
anything that does the same for women. It has been very sad to look
at.

[...]

> The benefits of participating in such a technical community are not obvious.
> Not to a normal, moderately passionate technologist. It is seen as more
> suited for the so called *enthusiast*. Younger men have more chance to
> experiment and find out, women not so much. They (and even men over a
> certain age) have more compulsions and lesser margin to explore and figure
> out. People agree that this is a noble endeavour, but to prioritise it above
> other compulsions we  have to measure the personal benefits. And since the
> whole phenomenon is new, we have no examples from past tradition.

Very well said!

How do you reckon that we as "enthusiasts", can start tackling this
problem? How do we convince those set of people (be it men or women)
that there is a lot that they can gain from being a part of such
communities?

[...]

> It also helps to have a clear
> policy against sexism, harassment and bad-behaviour (We learned this the
> hard way).

Agree here. Do you have one setup from the ChennaiRb group so that we
can read and understand and have a point of reference?

On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 2:35 PM, James Mortensen
<james.mortensen at synclio.com> wrote:
> I think adopting a policy and points of contact is a good idea.  However, I
> don't think one needs to reinvent the wheel.  There are several sexual
> harassment policy templates available on the Internet that we can tailor:
> https://www.google.co.in/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=a_taVaiqJoKu8wefu4DACg&gws_rd=ssl#q=+sexual+harassment+policy+template+

Fair enough James, but I'd like to see the ChennaiRb group's policy
since we are both co located. The point being that they might have
taken into account their location based experiences before drafting it
out. And I feel we could benefit from that.

> What's more, one important component of such a policy is very clear paths of
> escalation.  Who would the points of contact be?  Will a female volunteer
> from Chennaipy be willing to step up and act as one of these points of
> contact so it's not just Vijay and Shrayas, an all male group of POC's?

Great point. I think it should be a female volunteer. Vijay, I or for
that matter, anyone else i'm sure will help out gladly when such an
issue arises but it definitely is more comforting when new women come
in and see that there is a female volunteer who they can feel
comfortable around in case such a situation happens.

> Also, most of our meetups involve listening to presentations and only brief
> mingling.  What is the boundary of this policy?  Will it extend to protect
> members from abuse outside of IMSc?
>
> What's more, will this be a "three strikes and your out" policy, as a
> reference to baseball, or will this be a zero-tolerance policy?
>
> Are we prepared to remove someone from the meetups if they are a high value
> participant, such as someone with great standing in the Python community?
> Stack Exchange drove off a Mathematics SE user, a well-respected professor
> with many awards in the mathematics community, because he couldn't behave
> himself and act like an adult on the SE network.  Are we willing to commit
> to doing the same if needed?

Very unclear about this. Will need to think about these. I'll get back
when I have answers. These are some fantastic thoughts James, I
appreciate you taking your time out to pen these down.

[...]


On Fri, May 22, 2015 at 1:02 AM, Sharmila Gopirajan
<sharmila.gopirajan at gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

> ILUGC conducts introductory classes for college students.
> Maybe we can partner with them? We could do a small session regarding
> python.  We could also identify girls who are interested in tech and
> invite them.  Hopefully, they will inspire and guide others to follow.

+1. Could definitely do. I'm sure some of us here know the ILUGC
people as well. We could collaborate on something for sure.

> 2. Lack of female role models
>     This was a sore point for me when I was in college.  It was quite
> common to see a few guys (not all) in each class being involved in
> programming competitions and tech outside curriculum. The proportion
> of girls involved were much, much less, verging nil.  I think there
> are two reasons for this.  First, as a society, the preference for
> marks in ingrained in most of us.  Any extra work did not count,
> unless, it impacted the grades. It was rather frowned upon. This
> effect seemed more pronounced in women. Clubbed with that, we did not
> have any female geek role models in college for us to emulate or look
> up to.  So probably, we were all just infected with the Impostor
> Syndrome and never even tried (I am equally guilty of that in college,
> something I regret to this day.).

I very much agree with all parts of this. I feel that the education
field makes people so cloudy to so many great things around them in
lieu of examinations and marks. (related video here[1]). I should also
very much agree that as I grew up in the tech world, I never really
looked up to any female role models simply because of the reason that
I wasn't made aware of their existance even. It (shamefully) is only
very recently as I started to be more proactive in finding material
and people to gain inspiration from that I found people of the likes
of Julia Evans, Jessica McKellar, etc.

Additionally, some colleges _don't even_ have seats open for women.
Loyola (the college I studied at), for example, doesn't even open its
Bachelors course up to women candidates. I'm not too sure of why they
should take such a decision even.

> 3. A cultural preference for mark oriented education rather than exploratory
>     While almost everyone in the student community have this ingrained
> at some level, the effect seems to be more pronounced in women.

Yes. I feel that the society as such imposes some kind of an invisible
expectation on women to be the "toppers" and the "centum" achieving
people. I'm sure it is the same society that frowns upon a woman when
she decides to "drop out" of her college in order to pursue something
that she loves and wants to be a part of.

> This
> is based on my experience but almost 10 years have elapsed since.  I
> don't know if it is still an accurate portrayal of the student
> community in general, and female students in particular.  Current
> students might be a better guide here.

Its been 8 since I finished mine and based on my interactions with the
current generation of people, I don't think much has changed. There
definitely is *much* more women participation, but not a healthy ratio
at all.

> 4. Time limited by the responsibilities that arise in our lives.
>     This is unfortunately unavoidable.  When you have a more
> responsibilities(family/demanding job/startup), the number of hours
> you can spend outside the spectrum of responsibility is very less.
> Again, this is true for men and women, but more pronounced in women,
> maybe because of the social structure.  One has to have much stronger
> motivation/desire to be able to stretch themselves. Options of getting
> someone in this stage is quite difficult.  The solution is to catch
> them young.  If the seed of curiosity is sowed when they are in
> college/school, there is a good chance that they will keep
> participating.

A wonderful point, this. What would you call, your definition of
"young"? And how do we help do such a thing? We could consider going
over to a Government / any other school on one day that is comfortable
to both parties and show them the things you can do with programming
and computers. We could demo The ExpEYES[2] system (which, so to speak
is nothing short of mind blowing) or show them, _practically_ what
computer science is great at. I'm all for this and would love to be a
part of such an activity.

>
> 5. Less Women in startups
>     Startups are the happening place with regards to new tech.  The
> proportion of women are much less in startups.  I believe it results
> as due to a mix of factors 1,2,3.

I feel that this scene is changing quite rapidly. I've been actively
talking to more people in the startup world and can constantly see
them mentioning women being very strong players in their payroll.

> 6. Other Interests
>     Some are simply going to find all this unimportant or not
> pertaining to their goal. After all the work at office, involving
> oneself in tech outside work might not be the most appealing option
> for some. They just have prioritized something else and that should be
> accepted.

This is definitely not something that we should be concerned with.
Everything starts from the interests of the person and that isn't
something we can control or should be controlling. If we do our best
in addressing all the points mentioned above, that in turn will help
with this point I feel.

> As far as creating a separate meetup group for women, the pros are
> that women may be more interested in contributing.  The cons are, they
> will miss out on the rich background of the general group and we will
> need to find enough participants to make such a meetup meaningful.

Agree with this. Is there any way we can retain the pro within
Chennaipy itself so that the con is avoided?

[...]

> It would be great if someone adds their views too.

Yes. The more the merrier :)

--
Footnotes:
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mtJOu29qbQ
[2]: http://expeyes.in/