[Chennaipy] Diversity in Chennaipy

[Shrayas rajagopal]

Hi Bindu,

On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 9:48 AM, Bindu Upadhyay
<upadhyay.bindu09 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am a newbie to Python and I joined this list to find material useful for
> learning.

Chennaipy isn't really a place to find material. It is more of a place
to ask questions since there are quite a lot of like minded people on
the list. There is an abundant amount of material to get started with
learning python over the internet but mailing lists are a place where
you can ask your questions related to that material. There are a lot
of helpful folk among us always ready to lend a hand.

> I found out about this group through a colleague of mine. I
> haven't attended any of the meetups yet.

Please do join us for the May meetup[1] :)

> I don't know how many women programmers and programmers are aware of this
> group as such.

There are a few people who join us and some of them are regulars too.
Some that come to mind are Sruthi and Sharmila. I look forward to
hearing from them on this issue.

> Maybe some stats could help us in gaining some context.

What kind of stats are you looking for? The ratio is *quite* low. The
maximum i've seen in women joining us is 5, I think. There was one
meetup in IIT though where there were a lot of people who turned up.

> Being
> an engineer, I can relate to the low ratio.

Could you please expand on this? Do you face issues similar to this at
your workplace as well? Is it being addressed there? Is there any
learning that we can translate from your workplace to our community?

[...]

> Conduct a workshop for newcomers (which I think you guys do at times)

We conducted a workshop in February[2]. We are looking to conduct
another one soon enough. The real question though is how to "reach"
the women.

> Reach out to students in colleges and spread a bit of awareness (Not sure if
> it is in the scope of your plan)

Please expand on this. I think we do have a few students who join us
but we've not taken an initiative (so to speak) to actively pursue
creating awareness via the students in their colleges. If you could
help us with an initial plan on how to bring this out, we could get
the ball rolling in our next meetup by requesting the students to help
us out.

> I don't think having a "girls only" event would do much. I was at one such
> event recently and the number of organizers was more than the number of
> attendees! But again, this might help more people in losing the fear that
> surrounds them.

PyLadies[3] is a really successful community that does exactly this
and I think the biggest reason that it works is that women naturally
feel more comfortable around women. This will allow them to focus more
on the technology and not about the environment and if it is feasible
for them. It pains me to say such a thing in this day and age but the
situation is such and till it changes, I feel that women only groups
could play a great role in bootstrapping them up to "community
standards" (sigh.)

> Would love to hear others thoughts about this and I am all in doing the
> needful.

Thanks so much for reaching out. Appreciate it.

---
Footnotes:
[1]: http://www.meetup.com/Chennaipy/events/222311276/
[2]: http://www.meetup.com/Chennaipy/events/220501575/
[3]: http://www.pyladies.com/