[spcoll]

This feedback makes it clear that acting feminine is considered a weakness, instead of a strength. You shouldn't be ashamed to look beautiful, wear dresses and make-up, and present cute slides with a pink theme and occasional kitty picture.

This is what the whole "like a girl" is about: if you express your femininity in the things you do and the way you look, people associate that with incompetence.

[falcolas]

Bright colors in slides, whether pink, blue, purple, or orange, is distracting in a presentation. It takes attention off the information being presented and puts it on the design choices.

Visual ticks - wringing your hands, messing with your hair, licking your lips - make you appear less confident, and has nothing to do with gender.

The vocal tick - making every sentence sound like a question - is distracting no matter who presents it.

These aren't gender specific criticisms in any way. Regardless, unless you're addressing a gender specific topic, why bring your gender into it in the first place? I'm interested not in the person presenting about algorithms, but the algorithms themselves.

A man would be rightly chastised for presenting a de-duplicaton talk with bright pastel blue slides, pictures of beer, and rubbing his forehead while presenting, why shouldn't a woman?

[JDiculous]

What you just said only applies to the pink slides comment. Excess fidgeting and uptalk are gender-neutral and make a presentation weaker whether you're male or female.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

Exactly. If you were to make a stereotypically "masculine" presentation, you wouldn't get negative comments on it.

[Alphasite_]

What, blue with tanks all over it? I think you'd get more than a couple of comments.

[thomasmarcelis]

Pink just is a bright colour. Bright colours can distract if used plenty. I've had the same comment on using too many yellow.

[sgift]

Black and yellow, beloved combination of many Star Wars fans, also known as "death of readable presentations" (yes, I got that comment and I've learned to never do this again)

[hderms]

what would be a stereotypically masculine presentation? not trying to bait or anything, I'm just curious what that would be? Some kind of bro-ish stuff included?

[nightski]

This is so not true. Suits are heavily discriminated against in our industry. If you wear a suit to a conference you probably won't get much attention.

EDIT: I must go to the wrong programming conferences, never see suits. Wish the down voters would just share their experiences!

[Bahamut]

I did not downvote, but I personally don't have any issues with people wearing suits - wear what you like. Only thing I've disliked seeing are popped collars, but more as a warning sign to stay away from the people wearing them if I can help it.

I also do not penalize for dress during interviews either. It's a distraction from the important things, and irrelevant to the answers to the questions of coding ability and culture fit.

[Roboprog]

Depends. Am I at an H/P conference, or Atlassian? Different crowds.

Aside: Atlassian is more interesting. H/P has better food.

[TTPrograms]

So you believe that a presentation can be identified with a gender?

[wongarsu]

I don't think cute things are seen as sign of weakness. At least I haven't seen anyone complain that some octocat was too cute for a professional company like github.