Anne Truitt Zelenka

Stowe Boyd on Kottke on gender diversity at conferences:

Gack. I am working with the CMP folks on Enterprise 2.0, and so far I have asked one person, a woman, if she could participate, and I was turned down.

Others have made the case that many of the most interesting woman for tech conference speaking roles have a higher turn-down rate than their male counterparts. I wonder if that is just an urban legend. Nonetheless, I am going to continue to dig into this issue, since it seems to never go away.

That woman was me. Thanks for the invitation, Stowe. I turned it down because right before that conference I’ll be in Hawaii for a wedding. I guess I could fly from Kona to Denver and then immediately get on a plane to Boston. If I were a man, would I? Maybe. I don’t know. If I were a man, I might feel less ambivalent about my brilliant career in technology. If I were a man, I might not be made to feel like a freak of nature because I’m a woman who likes tech.

This week I was invited to be on a conference board. I said no again. I don’t have a schedule conflict. I could do it. But the calculus of work for me is necessarily different than the calculus of work for many men. Here are a few reasons why:

• I have three kids. They’re all in school from 8:30 am to 3 pm, but anyone with kids knows that’s a nominal schedule not anything to be counted on. For example, this week they’re out of school for spring break. I do have an au pair on the way, so I’ll be available for more work. But for now, I’m the childcare giver of first and last resort in my family.
• Being successful careerwise is not something that is unreservedly celebrated in women. We grow up learning that to be feminine and to be powerful are mutually exclusive. Men don’t suffer from this conflict — to be powerful and to be masculine and to be a leader are all consistent. It still stings when I remember back to when a coworker of mine at Oracle confessed to me how offputting he found my “aggressiveness” when I started there. I was just being myself and being mostly successful… but it was at odds with my gender.
• Visibility online has more drawbacks for women than for men. Men get death threats too but they aren’t subject to the same level of vitriol and sexual harassment that women face. Whether it’s rational or not, I worry about being stalked. I don’t think men worry about that. I made my Twitterstream private because I felt fear about people watching me that I don’t know.
• Working in male-dominated environments (e.g., most tech conferences) is personally exhausting to me, setting aside the extra work and travel it involves.

I’m getting to the point in my life where I’m not interested in compromising what I need and what I want and what feels comfortable to me just because the people in power say I should want and need something different. I don’t particularly like conferences, don’t want to travel away from the kids, don’t want the discomfort of dealing with so many masters of the universe at one time.

Another way to look at it is from a resource perspective. Men are generally paid more (especially if you look at compensation over the lifetime), have more time to themselves (given women’s disproportionate share of the caregiving burden for our youngest and eldest relatives), and have more imputed expertise to draw upon (because women are generally considered less competent than men, given the same qualifications). Going to a conference requires resources that sometimes I don’t feel like I can spare.

To bring a balancing perspective though: as a woman, I have a different set of opportunities and payoffs than men. Different, not worse. I easily took five years off from the workforce and no one questioned me. Most men would have to justify themselves again and again to do that. I can mix the personal and professional on my blog more easily than a man can, because it’s more acceptedly female to do so. I can own my weaknesses instead of pretending they don’t exist.

I don’t know that you’ll see me at any more conferences this year. Here’s what I’m looking forward to: continuing to nurture Web Worker Daily to its full potential, visiting Volcano National Park on the Big Island in June, making our now-annual trek to Estes Park/Rocky Mountain National Park in July when I’ll look for lakes instead of climbing mountains, writing a book, welcoming and making our Paraguayan au pair feel at home, taking up painting again, learning to play guitar like that guy from the Foo Fighters, and cherishing people like Stowe who inspire and stretch me, even if they might shake their heads at how I live my life and pursue my career.