Twitter reactions on Karen’s keynote at djangocon.eu¶

Tags: django, djangocon

Karen Tracey just gave a keynote at djangocon. One thing she talked about was the participation of women in our community.

(Note by Reinout: look at Jacob’s comment underneath this entry (on my site) too. I just want to drive home that it is soooo easy to make a mistake. I don’t intent to say anything negative about the person asking the question: he had the courage to speak up! Hurray! (I adjusted the wording a bit in the paragraph below after Jacob’s comment))

During the questions someone asked a question in which he (accidentally; probably with the best intentions; completely well-meaning), made a couple of generalizations like “women can communicate better than men”, “women have advantages x, y, z”, “women are quieter”. This resulted in quite a storm of twitter comments. I’m quoting some of them here as I think they’re useful to keep in our collective community’s memory.

Anthony Ricaud @rik24d

Really disappointed to here more segregation and stereotypes after @km_tracey inspiring keynote.

Eleni Lixourioti @rhapsody88

#djangocon No. Women are not quiet. I’m not quiet, I shout a lot and get things done. Don’t ruin good intentions with MORE generalising.

Russ Ferriday @russferriday

@jacobian Yes, another peeve: males telling females how they should feel when approaching this community. 2 examples today #djangocon

And to close off with an important observation:

jacobian @jacobian

@russferriday @idangazit @wrboyce @pydanny HOWEVER, I’m gratified to see that ‪#djangocon is really taking this seriously and engaging…

Yes, talk about it! Be aware!