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From: bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.org.usenix
Subject: Re: Women's BOF in Phoenix?
Message-ID: <7615@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: Thu, 14-May-87 22:01:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.7615
Posted: Thu May 14 22:01:41 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 16-May-87 12:43:56 EDT
References: <148@krebs.acc.virginia.edu> <466@unmvax.UNM.EDU> <69@esquire.UUCP> <491@unmvax.UNM.EDU>
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Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci.
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In-reply-to: lee@unmvax.UNM.EDU's message of 30 Apr 87 15:33:43 GMT

Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.41.4 of Mon Mar 23 1987 on bu-cs (berkeley-unix)



Although I agree Lee Ward seems to be trying to be a bit inflammatory
he does ask some questions that aren't altogether undeserving of answer,
so here's my 2c:

1. It is the women's fault they don't attend.

Why do you assume this? The point of the BOF is they don't assume
anything, the idea is to gather some information and see if there is
indeed any problem which could be addressed.

Remember that many if not most attendees have their expenses paid by
their employers. To some extent this indicates their status in the
pecking order of things. One question counter to your statement is
whether or not women tend to be denied this opportunity, I don't know,
but it might be worth a BOF to see if anything is revealed. Further,
it might reflect the relative status of women in the field, is there
any pattern to the job level of people who attend? (eg. system
programmers?  keypunch operators?) Is this generally under-represented
by women? Are Unix jobs under-represented by women? I don't know, I
guess it's all possible.

There may be other factors, such as traditional social roles. Do women
in general attend conferences away from home as much as men? Does this
cause friction between spouses more then when it's the man away from
home?  If this is a problem, is there anything that could be done
about that?

Do women feel welcome? Has USENIX for any reason gotten some sort of
reputation of a bunch of men sitting around drinking beer and being
obnoxious or some such, you know, the Shriner's convention kind of rep
(it would be completely untrue, but gossip has its ways.)

2. Usenix is not the appropriate place to address these issues.

Inasmuch as they seem to affect Usenix attendance (which seems to
always have been the point/name/mission of this proposed BOF) where
else would it be discussed? Why isn't it relevant to speak about the
mix of attendees at Usenix except through the Usenix organization?
Say all of a sudden there was a complete drop-off in systems types and
only people who sold Unix were attending, wouldn't that be something
to discuss if people felt this was a problem that needed a solution?

There is one possible fallacy however. All the women who don't attend
obviously won't be at the BOF so how does one gather information as to
why others couldn't attend? Well, this could be addressed there, I
would hope that if there were any reasons that are holding anyone back
they would post them to the net, obviously my hypothesizing is of very
limited value.

Maybe it's because they do the summer conferences in Atlanta and
Pheonix? Perhaps only women are sane :-)

	-Barry Shein, Boston University