The British Ruby Conference announced, last night, that the 2013 event would be cancelled, because of a furore stemming from one developer’s reaction:
Nice speaker lineup for @britruby. Except for the 100% white guys part.
— Josh Susser (@joshsusser) November 17, 2012
Ruby is a programming language, developed in the mid-1990s, which has gained a lot of popularity in recent years as the basis of a framework used for building web applications. As with programming in general, the Ruby community undoubtedly skews heavily male, and the conference – known as “BritRuby” – cites that in its defence.
In their official explanation for why the decision was made to not put on the 2013 event, the BritRuby organisers write:
We wanted innovative ideas and we whole-heartedly pushed everyone that submitted a proposal to think outside the box. Our selection process was the content and nothing more. Not the individuals gender, race, age or nationality. It’s about community…
The Ruby community has been battling with issues of race and gender equality. We at Brit Ruby were well aware of this fundamental and important issue. This was one of the reasons why we encouraged everyone to submit a speaker proposal.
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It is often the case with situations like this that those under attack cite the belief that they picked the line-up based entirely on quality. For instance, it remains true that orchestras are dominated by men, and for years, explanations were given about how only men had the strength, or control, or innate musicality to play certain instruments, and so on.
Yet as orchestras gradually introduced blind auditions – actually picking the line-up based purely on quality – the gender balance shifted. And it appears much the same may be true of technology. Josh Susso, the developer whose tweet sparked the whole discussion which ended up leading to the conference being pulled, ran his own ruby conference in San Francisco, GoGaRuCo, which had a completely blind selection process.
As a result of that, and explicitly reaching out to women’s programming groups, the slate of speakers was a quarter women. Even though it may be easier in a city like San Francisco, it is possible.
Sadly, the debate around BritRuby’s monoculture led, according to the statement, to their sponsors getting spooked after accusations of sexism and racism threatened to toxify the brand. With uncertain sponsorship and personal liabilities, the organisers were forced to cancel.
They did not go out in a blaze of glory.
Sean Handley, who has run previous conventions with the BritRuby team but was not involved in this one, posted his own take on the situation which is slightly more self-pitying than the official one:
Yes, gender equality and racial equality are important. But the team’s motives were to get the best speakers who were able to make it to Manchester. Turns out, a lot of the famous Rubyists are white guys and all of the ones who said they’d like to come were, indeed, white guys.
Making an issue out of that is, frankly, misguided. Adding a token minority speaker is offensive to that speaker, it says “You’re here because you tick a box – not because you’re skilled.” It doesn’t matter who speaks at a conference, as long as they’re capable, interesting and relevant. That’s what matters: content, not style.
Even that defence starts getting a bit uncomfortable in the end. If you are defending your all-white, all-male speaker line-up by saying that you only wanted the “best speakers”, it’s hard for non-white, non-male people to not infer that they are considered sub-par. Saying that the only way to fix the problem would be to add “token” speakers makes it sound like there are no non-token speakers worth inviting.
And saying that “it doesn’t matter who speaks at a conference, as long as they’re capable, interesting and relevant” is plainly untrue: it does matter, to a hell of a lot of people, and if you set out to be a leading voice in your community, you owe it to yourself and that community to try and make it a better group to be in.
Some – not all – elements of that community sorely need help, judging by the comments beneath Handley’s post.
The whole event ruined for everyone but a few narrow minded individuals.
Yes. The people who want not all-white-male-speakers are narrow minded.
Next thing would be people complaining about the lack of Unicorns on the conferences.
Women in tech: Literally Imaginary, apparently.
[Quoting an earlier commenter] I feel this needs to happen more and more so Conference organizers are forced to start considering diversity from the beginning and initiate programs or reach out to more non-white-males to speak
While we’re at it, let’s make sure to throw in a few over-50s, a disabled woman and a couple of homosexuals. We need to focus on diversity after-all.
Where is the line?
Oh no! Gay people might be at the conference?!
Seriously, this whole equality crap is… crap! One thing is when there are cases where women are not treated fairly (not good) or abused (very bad), but equality is a non-issue for most of us in the Western world. In cases where exploitation or abuse are confirmed, society should act for sure, but the reality is men and women are not equal in many ways. It’s not that one is better and the other is worse is that, quite simply, we’re different. I see plenty of “Women Seminars” (not very “Men Seminars” I should add) and I don’t see anyone rushing those asking for “equality” or “lack of men on these”.
I’m done here.
Update: Changed the headline slightly, and corrected the reference to Sean Handley
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