Day 96 - Sustainability issues for 'keeping our female coders"

Yesterday I wrote about balance.  The fact that finding balance is particularly challenging in the tech industry has been agreed upon for some time, might have something to do with this (not so surprising) demographic analysis  graphic I found in the latest issue of Bloomberg Businessweek issue "What is Code?)

.... demographics from Stack Overflow's 2015 developer survey

Section 2.6 of Paul's Ford's 38,000 word essay shares insights on these demographic mostly related to the discouraging norms in the tech culture (including but not limited to sexual harassment so rampant that today's conferences are including codes of conduct to curtail it).

"The problem is pervasive: There are a lot of conferences, and there have been many reports of harassing behavior. The language Ruby, the preferred language for startup bros, developed the worst reputation. At a Ruby conference in 2009, someone gave a talk subtitled “Perform Like a Pr0n Star,” with sexy slides. That was dispiriting. There have been criminal incidents, too.
Conferences began to develop codes of conduct, rules and algorithms for people (men, really) to follow.

 From our own Local Conference in Burlington Vermont: 

If you are subject to or witness unacceptable behavior, or have any other concerns, please notify a community organizer as soon as possible … 


—Burlington Ruby Conference

"The problem with women in technology isn't the women" concludes Paul Ford in his 38,000 word essay written for  the latest issue of Bloomberg Businessweek (which  devoted  the whole issue to  What is Code?)

http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-paul-ford-what-is-code/