Women and their friends

Background and overview
Many programming communities have been running gender diversity outreach events in the past few years. If you're organizing an event where women are invited, and anyone else may also join if they are the invited guest of a woman, you might run into situations where you have to communicate something awkward to an attendee. This page exists so you can just copy-and-paste rather than stress out.

Organizers of "women and their friends"-style outreach events can find themselves in murky waters. We work to build a communities that contain, welcome, and respect a wider range of people than before. But in doing so, we find ourselves in situations where tact seems advisable. We mostly communicate with attendees (and prospective attendees) in writing -- by email, and on meetup pages.

So this is a collection of situations organizers have found themselves in and some text that seems to have worked okay! It documents a collection of standard practices among groups like the Boston Python Workshop, the Chicago Python Workshop, and others that stay in touch through the OpenHatch events community.

(Also: Major credit to Railsbridge for coining the term "women and their friends.)

Most of  this   text  is  so  short  as  to   not  need  a  copyright statement. As a special exception to the regular OpenHatch wiki policy, editors to this page affirm they release their text under the terms of CC Zero.

If you want to contribute text you've used for a workshop you've run when you've run into a bind, please just add a section.

Being welcoming to anyone who identifies as a woman
The Boston Python user group workshopped the following text which has stayed a part of the event invitation since it first appeared:

Audience: Women and their friends who have no or limited programming experience. This event is welcoming and respectful of trans women. Men are welcome as guests of women who are attending (please RSVP as well).

You can see it in context on a recent Boston Python Workshop signup page.

Kicking someone out of the group
A city's Python Workshop experienced a man coming to the workshop with the dubious situation of his daughter (who is younger than the age of majority) being the main attendee, with him as the invited guest. Eventually he was awkward and hugged and otherwise touched attendees as if they had a reason to be hugging him, which some found weird, and others found uncomfortable.

Here is the email the organizers sent to him:


 * Asking someone to leave

That story turned out very well, by the way. The person immediately accepted his mistake, apologized profusely, seemed to feel quite bad, and has not returned to the group.

On an event page
Two men asked, on the web page for the first Boston Python Workshop, if they were special enough to break the rules:

No male in this event :( i want to go

and

Any males allowed? Like Francis, I would love to get an intro to Python.

This is a disappointing situation for the organizer because the rules were pretty clear up-front, and now the organizer has to somehow explain to this person that they're completely missing the point while still seeming like a nice person; your message will likely be broadcast to everyone on the event.

Here's the text we used in Boston, visible on the same event page:

The goal of the event is to bring more women into the Python Meetup group. Men are welcome to come if a woman brings them.

But also, the event has been full for a bit! If the event goes well, we hope to run it again -- there sure seems to be demand.

The Boston Python Meetup group runs a bunch of intro events; the last one was a few months ago. So join the mailing list and stay tuned. We'll also be publishing the material we're teaching with.

Speaking personally (as Asheesh), one of my favorite things about running these events in conjunction with an existing, gender-neutral user group is that one can lean on the existing user group's gender neutral events when prospective attendees ask questions like this.

General things to mention when writing notes like this:


 * Be crystal clear about your goal for the event.

When they are vague about their +1
Sometimes men seem reluctant to indicate which  main attendee invited them. Recently, one Chicago Python Workshop  prospective attendee was asked who he was  coming with; instead  of answering,  he generically assured the organizers he was a +1.

In my personal  opinion (as  Asheesh), you  should absolutely  not be lenient   with   this   rule   for   attendees   you   do   not   know personally. What's at stake is your ability to create a reliably safe environment. Yes, it's true  that women  could  themselves make  the environment unsafe, but that's a risk we already  accept by accepting all women, and it's also not a problem I've seen in conversations with many workshop organizers.

Therefore, you can use the following emails (or something like them) to contact attendees who may not have an actual +1.


 * /Maybe a solo dude -- used when someone is registered and you think they probably are a +1 but you are not totally sure


 * /Very likely a solo dude -- used when someone was vague in answering if they have a +1

Sending emails like this can be very awkward. Therefore, it's helpful to structure your signup process to minimize the chance of this. For example, you can ask that men RSVP as the +1 of the woman who invited them, rather than individually, so you can skip checking up on them. Or you can ask them to list the person who invited them in the comments of their RSVP.

Other resources

 * Asheesh Laroia is always very, very happy to help you write emails to attendees in awkward situations.
 * There may be other relevant, helpful pages on the Geek Feminism wiki.