Wouter Tebbens ⁂Feb 28

Today is #SobTec, the annual gathering in #BCN about #technologicalsovereignty since 2016.

As always, gender balance is a challenge, but at least 6 of 11 sessions count with a female presenter.

And as always, collected note taking is done through collaborative pads by @femprocomuns and the Teixidora.net semantic wiki

https://SobTec.cat

Show threadrex0nFeb 28
@Wtebbens @femprocomuns And is it important to highlight the fact that there are six female presenters out of eleven? If there were five, would that be a problem?
Show threadSobTecMar 2

@Wtebbens @femprocomuns

Dear @rex0n
Thank you for sharing your thoughts; we truly appreciate critique because it helps us to do things better. In SobTec we certainly had (and have) some difficulties confronting #gendertech. We have been trying to do things differently, but we still need to change something more, but we are not able to find what. Any thoughts about that are welcome. (1/5)

Show threadSobTecMar 2

We try to issue the problem "as best as we can": admitting the problem, and thematizing it. We openly say how many females present in each edition and (at the end of the day) how many as public. This is not sufficient, and the counting is manual, quite imprecise, and we are not happy with it, as we have to assume »assume« their gender. Still, it seems to us that, that's the best we can do, but we are open to ideas and suggestions. (2/5)

@Wtebbens @femprocomuns @rex0n

Show threadSobTecMar 2
In the welcome session of #sobtec2026 we said that we have an ambivalent feeling: females participated in 6/11 talks (actually 7/12, one female speaker could not attend) which are good news in comparison to previous editions. Yet only 6 from 18 speaker were females, which is clearly bad news. We asked all the attendees to let us know what we could do differently. It's better than other years, but still a lot of work to do (3/5)
@Wtebbens @femprocomuns @rex0n
Show threadSobTecMar 2

We have also been asking some women* about the main obstacles. An astonishing number of them commented that children care (during #Sobtec2026 schools are closed) and not having "enough time" played a role in not coming to SobTec. We have been organizing some children activities: in past editions it was quite informal ("email us if you need children support"), but this year we included in the programme. We learned that we need to communicate better (4/5)

@Wtebbens @femprocomuns @rex0n

*edited

Show threadWalter van Holst
@sobtec @Wtebbens @femprocomuns @rex0n "females", are you Richard Attenborough?
Mar 2 at 1:30pmWeb
Show threadWouter Tebbens ⁂Mar 2

@whvholst @sobtec @femprocomuns @rex0n I think the person handling the sobtec mastodon account isn't native English (but does a good job for around here).

We'd normally say "women", while "females" goes for female animals....

Show threadWalter van HolstMar 2
@Wtebbens @sobtec @femprocomuns @rex0n Using "females" instead of "women" is also being normalised by incel techbros, so regardless of intent it warrants a response.
Show threadSobTecMar 2

...that was certainly not our intention.

Again, sorry, we are doing what we can, and do our best to learn.

So, 6/11 female speakers, and we asked women about the main obstacles, right?

PD: I'm editing the previous post

@whvholst @Wtebbens @femprocomuns @rex0n

Show threadSobTecMar 2
@Wtebbens ♥️
Show threadSobTecMar 2

@whvholst
No clue about the relation between "females" and Richard Attenborough, I just went nuts trying to get it and I found some dinosaurs...

We were talking about female speakers, so I continuded with female, but women seems a far better word choice 😳 😅
#learningbydoing

@Wtebbens @femprocomuns @rex0n