[_b8r0]

Wow, I find this pretty bad.

I've just come back from co-running my conference last week. We were way up on female attendance and speakers compared to last year, which I'm really glad with. Women don't need discounted tickets to decide whether or not to come to a con. They definitely don't need their own colour lanyards and if they had one it doesn't need to be pink.

Most importantly, what women need are reasons to come, not discounts. We're limited in what we can do at 44CON[1] to change the sausagefest nature of the industry by the number of women, but we're happy to help where we can. We should focus on improving the conference experience for women (and everyone) so they'll tell their colleagues and friends in industry to come along. Women buy tickets too, is it so hard to listen to customers instead of singling them out?

[britta]

Discounts could make sense because of the evidence that women tend to be paid less than men, but that would have to be handled with a ton of tact - I don't know how I'd do it.

I've also seen these forms of practical support from conferences that want to encourage participation from women:

* Enacting a harassment policy and/or code of conduct to provide a signal that the organizers care about maintaining a healthy conference environment, which can help women feel more comfortable attending (see http://adainitiative.org/what-we-do/conference-policies/).

* Helping make arrangements for childcare, such as setting up inexpensive group childcare for children of attendees, since women tend to have more responsibility for children than men do.

* Offering advising for qualified people interested in submitting talks who don't have much speaking experience, or having lightning talk opportunities for less-experienced speakers, to help fix the self-reinforcing cycle of few women speakers at conferences.

And pleasantly enough, those policies also benefit attendees of all genders and support other kinds of diversity as well.

[_b8r0]

> Discounts could make sense because of the evidence that women tend to be paid less than men

While it is true that many studies have shown that there is a disproportionate difference amongst the average between men and women, people working in information security are generally paid above average to start with. Furthermore, quite a lot of people who come to 44CON come through their employer.

To be honest I'd rather we gave a bigger discount to those who are paid less, but I don't know how to do that.

[geddski]

Those are great ideas, we'll definitely follow suite. Google is also providing complimentary childcare.