We are the Podcats, and welcome to our very
first podcast where we are going to introduce ourselves
and talk a little bit about why we are
even doing yet another podcast, Hidden Figures of Python.
And we have announced it already on social media.
And we are also going to address a
little bit some of the responses we've had.
So with me today, we have Mariatta, Georgi,
Cheuk, and we are all, all over the world.
So I'm Tereza, I live in Hamburg.
I'm from Romania.
I started PyLadies Hamburg long ago, and
I'm involved in several of the Python
Software foundation groups like Code of Conduct
and Diversity and Inclusion. And, Mariatta?
Hi, everybody.
My name is Mariatta.
I'm in Vancouver, Canada, and
I'm a Python core developer.
I'm an open source maintainer and contributor.
And I'm involved in the Python community in a
lot of ways, not only as the open source
contributor, but also I run conferences, meetups.
I've been the chair of the PyCascades
I co founded the PyCascades Conference, and
I'm chairing PyCon US 2023 and 2024.
Go to you, Georgi.
Hello, everyone.
This is Georgi here.
I'm in Amsterdam.
So I'm actually a little bit everywhere.
So previously I've been living in Thailand and helped
out and organized and led PyCon Thailand, and also
Pycon APAC 2021, kind of not only Python related
events, but also several hackathons and, like Code War.
And I did organize RubyConf and co founded PyLadies.
And I've also actually been designing the websites for
PyCon and a few other main Python related events.
Passing the mic to Cheuk
Hello, I'm Cheuk.
I live in London.
Usually I'm not home because I am a
speaker at a lot of different places.
Right now, I'm in Tokyo, Japan.
So, hello.
Also, I am currently at the PSF board.
I've also been a PSF fellow since 2021.
And, yeah, I've been involved in a
lot of work in the Python community. Yeah.
So I think maybe we should just explain a little
bit why we come up with the name Hidden figures.
So we have been searching around and finding a
lot of ideas, and Cheuk even came up with
something crazy called Espresso Orange Juice, which was actually
just simply what I like to drink.
That was one of the first idea.
And then eventually, I remember Mariatta
came out with the "Hidden Figures".
So maybe Mariatta, you can explain
why it comes out with that.
You come up with that title?
Well, yeah, I guess it's really about
what are we doing in this podcast?
Like, what is the topic of this podcast is about?
And I guess when we talk about it,
we wanted to highlight underrepresented group and women
in the Python community because we felt their
stories aren't being shared enough, or I think
they're not getting the recognition that they deserve.
And when thinking about that, it brought me to
the stories, actually, there was a book about this
and a movie that was a big hit, the
Hidden Figures, which was also highlighting stories of African
American women in NASA in the past.
And I thought, this relates so much to what we
see in the Python community, and I thought, maybe let's
use the name the "Hidden Figures of Python".
Yeah.
So it's not just about the title.
I think the idea came up, kind
of brew into what it is now.
Starting from PyCon US last year, which I seen, everybody's there,
there's like a big party, a lot of people very
excited to see so many people and go to film
some podcasts while they meet some speaker or some guests
that they want to invite there in person.
So I think that's great.
But I have an observation about most of these
guests or people who have been interviewed are male.
So for me, it feels like, of course, these people,
they have achieved a lot of things, they got a
lot of respect in the community, but I feel like,
are there any women at all who kind of achieved
same level of contribution, getting respect from the community, but
hasn't been featured for whatever reason?
So that's why I think that we
need to do something about it.
So I talked to my good friends sitting
here, and they're all on board of this
idea that we should do something.
So that's kind of how it got into we want to do a
podcast, we find a good name for it and why we're here.
So I think Georgi and I are in
the Diversity and Inclusion workgroup with the PSF.
And here one aspect is also visibility and also highlighting
role models, because another side effect of seeing a lot
of events and podcasts where there's mostly men talking or
doing things or being highlighted that they are doing it
makes it not very inviting sometimes. Right?
And if for people that want to get started,
and they are from underrepresented groups in Tech or
women, and if you don't really feel like you
don't see role models, you don't really see that
there is space for you, like an inviting space.
But I know once you start getting involved.
So we have PyLadies, we have
all sorts of organizations in Python.
Once you start getting involved, you see that
there are people, there are role models.
It's just that it's not very obvious.
And I think, how do we make
that a little bit more obvious? Right.
So this is not about taking space from other people.
Right?
It's more about highlighting that the space
is a lot more diverse than it's.
Looking at the moment, if I can add.
I feel there is a lot
of power in highlighting role models.
For example, I could share my personal experience.
Like, when I went to PyCon for the first time
ever, I saw lots of speakers, men and women.
When I go to speakers, even though I saw
lots of speakers, it was only when I saw
another women, another women of color on stage.
That's the moment that I feel inspired myself, that,
oh, maybe I want to be like her.
I want to be speaker, too.
And that kind of power, I did not
get it unless I actually see somebody.
And I feel like there is responsibility in
community leaders to not only provide content, but
making sure you are highlighting diverse members to
be able to further inspire other people.
So that's what I want to get.
One thing, Tereza, you brought up about
this, and also Mariatta bringing this up.
I personally was a bit surprised when I
actually started stepping up as the organizer, the
PyCon Thailand lead at the first time.
The moment I took over this task,
I see that there were more women
that actually started joining and participating.
The year when I actually started, there was slightly better,
maybe like three or four, I would say from 10%
of female speakers, it increased to about 20%.
And now that the ball got rolling, PyCon Thailand
this year has about almost 50% female talk submission.
And that is amazing.
And this is what I meant by it
is not because, or what we meant.
It is not because there are
no female role models out there.
We just need support.
The moment when I was in PyCon,
us, we attended PyLadieslunch.
I mean, that's not only female,
of course there are males joining.
But it was so empowering.
When you are there, the ladies who are so
afraid to step up, actually have the courage to
step up and talk about their stories, talk about
how they went from zero to something to something
that everyone knew but was not talked about.
And I think this is part of reason
why I said yes to this podcast.
Yeah.
So I think it's a very good point of, you have
to have some role model there to take the lead.
That's why I keep talking to organizers that, do
you have any women in your organizing team?
Not just as a volunteer that do some small
tasks and stuff, they're actually in the, I would
say a leadership role, that they're helping to make
decision, helping to be in the discussion and stuff.
We need that because you can say all
what you want, that we support diversity.
But even if it's so simple, right.
We are not talking about finding someone
who may be quite difficult to find.
It's just, well, this world has two gender.
Well, maybe more than two gender,
but majority, there's two gender.
Even that finding, let's say, women,
to get involved, to be there.
Have you ever tried?
Have you do it?
Can you show that you have done it?
Actions speak louder than words.
You can't just say that you support diversity and just
keep onboarding people who look like you to be because
you just feel more comfortable working with them.
So that brings us to the point where
we want to find out why we keep
seeing men appearing in podcasts and stuff.
So, Mariatta volunteered to data research.
So, Mariatta, do you want to talk a little bit about.
Think.
I guess we just didn't have data about it, right?
Personally, when I see podcast
series announced, I pay attention.
I pay attention that it's men in a podcast, and
the next week is men again and again and again.
And I thought maybe I should come up with the
data, maybe we should actually collect so that it doesn't
become just what Mariatta thinks and becomes real data.
And when I collected the data in September of
2023, I collected data from three popular podcasts.
And you can read the result in
our blog post, Pypodcats.live/blog.
It's a long URL, but find it basically what I found
out of three different podcasts that's been going on for years
that has more than 100 episodes, each of them.
Out of those episodes, 666 episodes, women appeared
in only 17%, like 100 or so.
And it's not also that.
There aren't 117 different women
who appeared on the episodes.
Some women appear multiple times, so in
fact, there are only 90 something episodes.
94, I believe, women out of
540 guests, so also 17% women.
These podcasts are considered as top Python podcasts.
If you go to Google and you try to
look Python podcasts, these are in different search engines.
I tried different ones.
These three podcasts are the ones that appeared.
And I feel like, yes, they have different
reasons, maybe for doing their podcast, but appearing
on the podcast also comes with a power
to influence the Python community.
And why are women being highlighted there?
That's a question we're wondering, right?
Anyway, if you like to read the blog post?
We announced it earlier.
We got some comments about it.
Does anybody else want to add to those?
Yeah, I wanted to add something.
I think maybe this is just for myself, like when
an established entity is inviting me to speak these days
or to do something, and then I check the website
and they are already like, I'm not represented there.
I usually get the feeling that, why
are they writing to me now?
They want to improve their diversity numbers.
I think it's really hard in general for
something that has already been going in uncontrolled
direction to switch to being intentional about diversity.
It's way more work.
So I think we have to acknowledge this
if they would start from scratch and try
from the beginning to be representing more groups.
So I think this might be also a reason why, because
diversity conversations about diversity are fairly new, at least not in
the US, but in the rest of the world.
I think being intentional about diversity in a lot
of circles is not something that was done a
lot in the past, so to say.
So I think for things that are already established,
there might be a little bit of an effect
that leads to them being finding it harder to
attract diverse speakers at this moment.
So they will have to go the extra mile for that.
I also feel a little bit like sometimes people tend
to run away from the name DNI or diversity and
inclusion because they say you're doing some kind of trend
thing because you want to be part of the spotlight.
So are you actually doing that for the reason
of being popular or being mentioned about, which also
kind of contradicting, you know what I mean?
It's like some people wants to be part of
it because they invite other people that is from
the minority groups or underrepresented groups and to just
bring up and say, hey, we want to include
you, or simply put rainbow colors on their logo.
And do you really mean that?
That's the thing.
Do you really mean that you're doing diverse,
inviting a diverse and inclusive group, or are
you just being part of it to be
the trend of 2021 or something like that?
And this is something that I find some people tend
to run away from, and at the same time, some
people wants to be that just for the spotlight.
But rest assured, the four of us, I can
feel that it's totally because we feel that it's
like something is burning Inside your heart.
It's like you want to say something, but
you're just waiting, just waiting for someone to
pop out to just make that difference.
And we realize that we still don't see anyone.
And that's why I say, you know what, let's just do it.
We can do it.
There's not going to be a tomorrow.
And I think that was part of
the reason why we are here too.
But I would like to add, wait
a second, I would like to add.
So I think I heard this
term, it's called purple washing.
When you're doing diversity for making it look
good, like you have green washing for environment.
I think at this point, if other groups or
other podcasts, conferences, if they're doing diversity for all
the wrong reasons, I also don't really care.
As long as they're doing it, the work, the
outcomes are still going to be valuable, right?
So I would say to everybody out there who
is thinking, okay, but what if my reasons are
marketing and make our podcast look good and whatever.
Yeah, it doesn't matter, just do it. Do the work.
The work is hard and have more diversity.
And yes it's going to have all sorts of
benefits, but you'll see the work is hard anyway.
I agree.
I personally see the numbers.
I don't care what's the reason of doing it.
But if the result is having more diverse, let's say
we can go back to Mariatta's research in a bit.
Like, let's say the number of women being
invited or actually appearing in a podcast is
increasing, then that's what I want to see. Right?
I don't care if it's like
over spotlight, whatever, it's hard work.
I can tell you doing diversity
and inclusion work is hard work.
It's not always get appreciated.
It's doing something like sometimes you have to fight
against what is popular opinion and stuff, right?
You have to fight against the current.
And even if someone started just want
to, for whatever like quotation, wrong reason.
But as long as they put in the work, as long
as we see the result, we should still appreciate that.
So let's go back to the numbers, maybe.
Well, I just wanted to mention though,
I don't know how to say that.
I find it annoying if people say diversity is
doing diversity work is something trivial or something easy.
You're doing it just because you
want to get a spotlight.
This is harder than writing code.
Writing code is very exact, it's factual.
There's a formula that you can apply
again and again to various code base.
Like doing this kind of work is hard.
And personally for me, I really rather
be writing code and writing bots.
But I care enough about this that I
want to be participated on this thing.
I give talks if I talk about my
code, my bots, I feel very happy.
I will be able to finish that talk in like a
day or two, I'm done and I feel super happy.
But sometimes I talk about diversity,
I talk about the community.
Those talks takes me at least two weeks to prepare.
And then during the rehearsal of that talks, I
feel super sad and angry and not happy.
It's a lot of mental
burden being involved in diversity.
And yeah, I find it annoying when people said,
oh, it's just diversity, as if it's easy.
Anyway, I'm just rambling.
No, I don't think it's rambling.
I totally agree.
I think all of us here, all four
of us here has been through that stage.
I remember when I started creating just
simple meetups and month after month, I
was literally the only female there.
And all the other attendees were male.
And someone just said, yeah, because
female don't want to speak.
An interesting thing, one of the company's founders, he
was saying that he was there because he just
tried to get hire new Python developers.
And he said, you know what,
I cannot find female developers.
I've been hiring, no one is there.
I step into his office one day and I look
around the office and there was literally like 90% men.
Imagine if you are the single woman working there,
do you feel comfortable, do you feel comfortable working
there if you are the only one?
So I think there are many ways you can
make an effort to make a difference, not only
doing the first step, which is super important, because
someone needs to have that difference there.
And also, I mean, 2000% disagree that
there's no female developers out there.
Yeah, I would like to grab that point and elaborate
a little bit, because it's not just a workplace, right?
As you can see, the response from one of the
podcast organizer and from other event organizers as well, I've
seen this many, many times that they are thinking like,
well, we just choose speaker regardless of gender, we just
choose whoever we think is great.
But the point is, I think usually
it's a point that got overlooked.
I want to believe that nobody do it on purpose
too, but people miss the point that actually now we
are not like men and women are not.
Well, we are talking about in general now that's
not in a level playing field, because young boys
have more access, more encouraged to do something technical,
to play with computer, play with computer games versus
young girl may get less exposure to those, they
may not be encouraged.
It's just a fact.
So saying that we just chose someone regardless of the
gender, I think is a bit kind of overseeing the
fact that we are not actually start from the same
level, because by the time look at how many who
choose the STEM object versus because why now there's more
female university students, but still not a lot of them
choose to study science study.
Actually, I read on this data one time in Asia
and it's a very interesting data that I've seen.
There are more female working as doctors, scientists and
all science and chemistry related and also data related
job, but apparently related to it was much lower.
But back then, years before even
my partner's mom was actually coding.
So what happened there?
That's a very interesting question,
like what happened there?
And I see that some of the Asians family,
they also feel like, oh, because being a doctor
is well regarded, being a scientist is well regarded.
There was something very interesting that after reading this
data, I was like, so what happened is developer
something that sounds different, more different than scientists and
doctors and chemists and et cetera.
I don't know if it has to
do much with being well regarded.
So the way I read about it, at
least in the west, what happened was that
to programming, it just became a powerful job.
And it's just how you have
class system, you have gender system.
It's just our society is pushing the privilege of
power on the people that usually have that privilege.
So then you have, it became so women didn't get
pushed, they got pushed out, out of the job.
So it's not like in the end, there's all sorts
of ways in a society how you push a whole
group out of something, I guess media and everything, that
at the end you think it was another narrative, but
in the end that's what really happened, right?
So it's been prestigious, like
financially speaking, a powerful job.
And then it just went to the people that usually have
the power in our society still just wanted to come round
out, so a little bit in case everybody forgot, right?
So Mariatta did research, published a blog post.
We also reached out to the podcast organizers
to say, hey, we're going to publish this.
Do you have anything to.
And someone, one replied, right?
And I think some of the replies are
also in public, they're on social media.
And yeah, maybe we wanted to take the
rest of the podcast to discuss a little
bit this, right, like what was the replies?
I'm also maybe to say for the future in general from
diversity work is like, how do you reply when you did?
Maybe something.
What would be a good way to reply for people
who want to reply usually say in diversity and inclusion.
When you did something to offend someone
accidentally or not, you apologize and you
say, I will do better next time.
So that is the gracious way of replying, when
in our case, the data does show that there
has been a clear trend in one direction and
justifying is sometimes not really helpful.
It also makes other people feel bad afterwards.
Right? Yeah.
I think Mariatta already established a point that when we
do this research, we just like, out of curiosity, and
we chose these podcasts because they are popular.
So first of all, congratulations.
If you got chosen, you are popular.
But I would always give them the kind
of thing that it may be oversight. Right?
Again, it may be oversight.
Benefit of doubt.
Yeah, I don't want to use that word
because usually that word means that we are
accusing someone, but we are not.
But yeah, I think that it may be an oversight, and it's
good that we bring it up and have a discussion, so maybe
we will figure out how to make it better together.
Yeah, I think I also want to point out
that we are not actually trying to pinpoint at
any podcast here or anyone that is among the
community, which is really not our intention.
We just want to figure out why is that?
Just like what Mariatta said, not just out from
Mariatta's head, nor Georgi's head, nor Tereza's head, or
Cheuk's perception that there are lesser women.
So data speaks the truth. and I personally
It's not only, to be honest, not only female.
I would even support that.
We will invite underrepresented folks.
And I grew up with people who
are misrepresented many times, especially like the
gays, the lesbians, and all this.
And I think they are just as human as any one of us.
I'm not going to make any judgment,
and we are not making any judgment.
I'm just going to make it simple to say
that we are simply drawing out information and data
and we are not pinpointing anyone else.
I would also like to. Yeah, or Mariatta said.
Sorry, go ahead.
I guess I just want to mention, I feel
encouraged by the story that we have even in
the Python and PyCon community, because at one point,
if you go to our about page, at one
point, the PyCon speakers were like 99% all men.
It's just 1% is woman speakers.
But it's got better over the years
because there are several groups of people
who intentionally try to make it better.
It starts with identifying, oh,
there's not enough women here.
What are we going to do about it?
And actually doing something, highlighting
the importance of it.
And over the years, this got improved.
And I think this is what we are trying to do here.
We want to start by highlighting
that there is an issue here.
What are we doing, what can we do,
and what can you all do? From us,
We're trying to just highlight more women and
underrepresented group members in the Python community.
So maybe there are other ways of
what you can do as well.
So go ahead, Tereza.
Yeah, I just wanted to add that maybe for me personally,
I don't really need to focus so much on the why.
I mean, there's all sorts of whys, and some of
them are not really constructive for moving forward, but rather
focus on what can we do to make it better.
So I think for conferences, all of us here
have organized conferences, different conferences, and then in a
lot of places there were quotas, right?
I mean, it's like, hey, some conference they said, we
want to have this kind of diversity, and then we
also want to have this other kind of diversity.
And those were like, at the
beginning, before speakers were selected, right?
So not after.
Oh, we found all the men's speakers.
We found like ten men's speakers.
Now we need to look for women
as well or something like that.
I've seen that also happening. Right.
But that's a little bit like the wrong direction,
I think, starting from like, hey, what is the
end result that you want to have?
And then how do we get there?
Or how do we encourage more to come in?
Yeah.
So we can use this podcast as a platform
to highlight that there is an amazing amount of
awesome people from all sorts of intersections of diversity
in the world that are doing Python.
And they have really successful stories and less successful
stories, direct or non direct, to get to where
they got that they will share with us.
And then all these people can then be
invited and all the other podcasts because we
found them, we are helping out.
Exactly.
Actually, that is the point.
And I think you will see us very
soon with all the invited list of speakers.
We are really excited and we have already
gotten quite a few responses of the speakers
that we are going to invite.
So stay tuned to our podcats.
Meow.
So if you want to send us
any message, meow@pypodcats.live
And that's how you can actually catch us.
And maybe if you want to speak on
one of our episodes, just write to us.
Also, even if this would be your first podcast podcast,
this would be a very first time friendly platform.
Also, if you're looking for female speaker. Yeah.
If you are looking for a
female speaker, panelist, keynote speaker.
You know where to look.
I promise, all of our guests are great. I promise.
So, yeah, until today, you could say there are
no women speakers out there, no women doing Python.
Until today.
But from now on, there won't be any more excuses.
Yes, I should mention that.
I want to mention that we follow the PSF code
of conduct in this community in the pypodcats episodes.
Basically, the PyPodcats hosts and guests and commenters
are bound by the PSF Code of Conduct.
And as well as we are actually supported
by the PSF, all our episodes will be
published on the PSF's YouTube channel.
And because of the Code of Conduct, we hope
that this encourage more participations from underrepresented group members
who might feel that, well, they might get attacked
if they appear on Internet and things like that.
So we are really something we care about.
I think.
Thank you Python Software foundation for supporting
us, because it doesn't come from zero.
We also need some support.
All this takes time.
All this takes.
Yep.
Thank you, PSF, for everything.
Thank you for your attention and
see you in the next podcast.
Bye bye.
Adios.
Bye.