[Inpycon] Encouraging women developers to join PyCon

[priya iyer]

>How about we decrease ticket price to some amount or maybe waive it
totally for them?

Umm... I am kind of taking offence at this. If we girls want to attend, we
can pay too. The only way to increase the female attendees is to go pitch a
demo of python at a girls only college.

I remember that girls from my college had a tendency to 'flock' and if a
few key people go, I am sure the rest would too. Secondly accommodation for
outstation girls. It may also be just a room at the girls hostel for 4
girls at a time, but even as a girl developer staying was my first
challenge.

Another challenge is transportation. If you talk in the college to give
their transportation to and fro after the evening time with drop off at key
places in the city, I think it would personally help.

I personally remember my mother being all anxious to let me attend
conferences that are in different cities or requiring a travel in the
evenings. I had to find some good male community member support to travel
'with him' after telling about him to my mother and assuring I was not
alone.

Anyway, this was my two pieces of personal experience wishlist items.

Best,
Priya


On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 9:47 AM, Noufal Ibrahim <noufal at nibrahim.net.in>wrote:

>
> I'm not sure if decreasing ticket prices is sending the right
> message. It's kind of condescending. I've always thought that the idea
> is equality in the domain rather than special treatment.
>
> However, initiatives like what the pyladies group does are useful. I'm
> just not sure how to go about this. It would be nice if there were a few
> active female members in the organiser group.
>
> Bibhas Ch Debnath <me at bibhas.in> writes:
>
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > We have been talking about encouraging women to join PyCon and start
> > working on python. Why not take a step towards it? How about we decrease
> > ticket price to some amount or maybe waive it totally for them?
> >
> > This could bring some questions like how'd we know that the ones joining
> > are bringing some value to the conference. Well, if more women are
> > attending, that's already a plus. To ensure even more, we could start a
> > program, like, ask them to create a github account, create 2-5 repo, show
> > us and they get a free ticker. Sounds odd and silly, but this will also
> > encourage them to start using git or any VCS. And this also shows us that
> > those participants actually made some effort to join the conference. They
> > are not just drove by the offer of freebies.
> >
> > I haven't seen many girls take up the initiative to become a developer,
> > only couple of my college friends did. They have no one to encourage them
> > in becoming developers. So to do that, we might have to put some extra
> > manual effort. But it should be overall good for the community.
> >
> > PS: Should have put the gender field in last year's feedback form. Could
> > get a statistic. This year will definitely do it.
> >
> >
> > ----
> > Bibhas
> > http://bibhas.in
> > _______________________________________________
> > Inpycon mailing list
> > Inpycon at python.org
> > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
>
> --
> Cordially,
> Noufal
> http://nibrahim.net.in
> _______________________________________________
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>
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