Re: Thinking about organizing a special women-oriented event

[Lesley Binks <lesley.binks@googlemail.com>]

2009/8/28 toya <toya@linefeed.org>:
> agnez wrote:
>> Alice Ferrazzi wrote:
>>> i agree with Miriam
>>> is not a joke !
>>> maybe he thought that it was only a stupid joke but it wasn't
>>> it's sexism and a really bad one, against a young middle-distance runner and
>>> also against all women
>>>
>>> [snip]
>> you have to be able to accept apologies, otherwise this discussion
>> leads to nothing.
>> agnez
>>
>
> I agree, the person already wrote (twice) to the list explaining and
> apologizing ...
>
> I think it is more productive to keep the focus on the topic of this
> thread.. which is the conference.
>
> About that, I like the idea of having women speakers only, I would
> suggest the following (about men participating -not as speakers -  on
> the event or not). That we host sessions for women only inside of it,
> and others that are open.
>
> I like a lot the work the genderchangers does, I would suggest to have
> workshops like those they do in the event. These workshops would be
> great for girls who are just starting with free technologies. And maybe
> those should the 'women only' ones.
>
> I would also suggest to add to the event page or propaganda the
> explanation from genderchangers 'why women only is important' to reply
> right at the beginning why we would have those spaces in the conference.
>
> bye,
> toya
>
Hi ...

Just raising this up a little ... has there been any further movement
on the idea of a all female meet?

I certainly support the idea.  When I worked in Engineering I found
the Women in Science and Engineering meetings useful at a number of
levels.
They were organised by women for women and were well attended women
only monthly meetings.
People spoke about the work they did and we all spoke about the
problems we all faced in the real and, we frequently felt, highly
discriminating world of Engineering while also listening to academic
research into the problems/advances made by women in the field of
Engineering.
I have always felt that a women only space does no harm to any
organisation and allows women to speak freely about matters that
directly concern them and affect them.

What do we think we could contribute to such a meeting?  How would we
make it work and what could we arrange talks about?  Where would we
meet?

Regards

Lesley

P.S. I will try and trace back through this thread but there's a lot
of noise in it.  I'm wondering where the Do Not Feed the Trolls sign
went.  ;)