[Chennaipy] Diversity in Chennaipy

Thu May 21 21:32:07 CEST 2015

Hi,
It is very encouraging to see this discussion being brought up.  I'm
very sorry for the late reply but it was something I wanted to talk
about for quite sometime, so there were so many thoughts to pull out,
so much editing to do :) .

I would like to start by saying that, while the lack of participation
of women in US and India on the surface seems to be the same, the
causes are a little different and hence the solutions need to be
different too.

1. Plenty of women choose technology over here as an option in higher
education. I bet it is higher than it is in the US.
2. Women are not told that they will not do well in STEM (a concept
that is subtly reinforced in girls in US, atleast from what I read).
No one ever told me so.  Nor have I ever got such an impression from
any other girl that I know in India that she believes she will do
worse in Science or Math than a guy.
3. I have had very positive and supportive students/coworkers 99% of
the time.  The 1%, probably more, I suppose happens in all industries.

The main challenges as I see are

1. Lack of knowledge about the opportunities available
    Most girls are not aware of the opportunities available in the
tech arena. We need to create more awareness about the avenues
available. 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.

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.).

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If you know any girl/woman who has some/any interest in tech, do
educate them of the possibilities available. If possible, dare them to
try some piece of tech outside their comfort zone. It might make a
difference for someone.

caveat emptor:  It is almost 10 years since I finished college. It is
also nearly 4 years since I worked a full time job. Thats a long time
in tech and this limits my perspective. Maybe things are different
now. I also apologize to any woman/girl out there if they feel this is
not the reality.  The picture I am painting is highly tinted by my own
experience.  It would be great if someone adds their views too.

Regards,
Sharmi

PS:
I just wanted to put so much thought into bytes, it grew too long.  I
have made a blog post of my rather long writeup. It is at
http://www.minvolai.com/blog/2015/05/My-Experience-in-Tech-and-its-reflection-on-Women-in-Tech-in-India/2015-5-21-My-Experience-in-Tech/
 The essence is the same, though I have added a a little more of my
life story there.

> Date: Wed, 13 May 2015 00:46:29 +0530
> From: Shrayas rajagopal <shrayasr at gmail.com>
> To: Chennai Python User Group Mailing List <chennaipy at python.org>
> Subject: [Chennaipy] Diversity in Chennaipy
> Message-ID:
>         <CAEkH89OwBMDxJce2nnjgKTct9d8D6ZgUDu2oNpebYFqFx1uLhg at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Hi All,
>
> Sometime earlier in the day, Karthik, who is also part of our
> community linked me to Jacob[1]'s keynote at PyCon 2015[2].
>
> I just got around to watching it and it left me thinking about a lot
> of things. Before you go ahead with reading the rest of this message,
> I urge you all to go and watch the keynote and come back to this when
> you're done.
>
> One of the things that has been in mind for a very long time for me is
> the imbalance in our community. I've attended almost all meetups since
> October last year and I find the amount of women attending these
> meetups as compared to the amount of men is startlingly low. I've only
> found Sharmila stepping up to give talks and I found her talk about
> intro to pandas outstanding.
>
> The question I want to ask all the women on the list and to everyone
> else as well is if there is anything that we, as a community can do in
> order to start bringing a change in this imbalance. Do you think that
> the expectation around being a "women programmer" is too much? Do you
> think that we could have a Code Of Conduct for our community that
> would help our women counterparts feel more comfortable? Could we help
> set up some sort of a PyLadies chapter in Chennai?
>
> I want to know if, as a community, we are fundamentally missing
> something that doesn't encourage women from participating.
>
> I feel we need to fix this because we seem to be missing out on some
> great people. I've been influenced by so many great women in the field
> of tech. I feel our community (and largely even our country) has no
> lesser talent than anyone else. We should take an *active* step
> forward in making this happen.
>
> I look forward to all your thoughts and suggestions on this.
>
> ---
> Footnotes:
> [1]: https://twitter.com/jacobian
> [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIJdFxYlEKE
>
>
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