1. Rails Girls:
Not only for Girls
RUBYKAIGI 2014, 19 SEPTEMBER 2014
HARUKA IWAO

2. Who am I?
 Haruka Iwao (@Yuryu)
 Solutions Architect at Red Hat
 Interests
 Distributed Storage
 Operating Systems

3. Part 1 - Gender Diversity

4. Do you know what this
graph shows?
0
60
Men Women

5. Number of Speakers at
RubyKaigi 2013
0
60
Men Women
Data from http://rubykaigi.org/2013/speakers

6. World Population, 2010
3.5B
3.4B
Men Women
http://www.geohive.com/earth/pop_gender.aspx

7. Where does this
difference come from?
RubyKaigi 2013
0
60
Men Women
World Pop. 2010
3.5B
3.4B
Men Women

8. Women Speakers Rate
0.0%
2.0%
5.2%
11.1%
9.9%
6.8% 7.2%
0.0%
4.7%
N/A
34.7%
9.5%
40.0%
35.0%
30.0%
25.0%
20.0%
15.0%
10.0%
5.0%
0.0%
RubyKaigi PyCon JP LinuxCon JP RubyConf PyCon US LinuxCon NA
2013 2014
Estimated by names and photos of the speakers

9. At Tech Companies
https://gigaom.com/2014/08/21/eight-charts-that-put-tech-companies-diversity-stats-into-perspective/

10. How about students?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/09/female-graduation-rates

11. Two questions arise
 Why do women choose other fields
than computer science?
 Why do we have fewer women
engineers compared to
graduates?

12. Why do women choose
other fields than
computer science?

13. “Be a good girl”
 Girlish and boyish thingy
 Playing with dolls
 Railfan (Railway enthusiast)
 Sewing / Needlework
 Driving
 Study / Research
 Search with Google Images and
you will see

14. Scientist

15. Florist

16. Computer programmer

17. Housekeeper

18. CEO

19. Executive secretary

20. Video – Always #LikeAGirl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs

21. Gender gap still exists
 These search results are from 2014
 not from the 20th century
 The gap comes from our culture
 We need to change, respecting
our culture

22. Why do we have fewer
women engineers
compared to graduates?

23. Question
 Do you take into account
candidates’ gender when deciding
hire or no hire?
 Do you ask candidates to submit
resume with their gender written?

24. JIS Resume format
JIS = Japan Industrial Standard

25. JIS resume requires…
Birthday(YYMMDD), Age
Gender
(M/F)
Photo

26. JIS resume requires more…
Number of dependent
family members
Martial status
(Married / Not married)
Does your spouse need to
be covered by your health
plan / pension / etc?
(in other words, does your
spouse work fulltime?)

27. Resume and gender
 Most Japanese companies use the
JIS resume format
 collecting gender, martial status, etc
 Web entry forms, recruiting agency
referring papers also require gender
 Why?
 Because they use such information
 Google “女性面接質問”

28. At RubyKaigi 2013

29. http://peterevjan.com/posts/rubykaigi-2013-great-conference-but-i-probably-wouldnt-go-next-year-if-i-was-a-woman/

30. http://blog.rubykaigi.org/post/52064582345/we-apologize

31. So what can we do?

32. At work
 Ask candidates not to write gender
 Or ask HR to hide it
 Consider interview questions
 Respect everyone as individual
professionals

33. Make our community fair
 No discriminations or harassments
 We attend conferences because
 It is interesting and fun
 Proposal is accepted
We want to learn
 Not because
 Someone is beautiful or kawaii

34. Join local activities
 Rails Girls is looking for
 Sponsors
 Volunteers(coaches, organizers, staff)
 Participants
 Encourage your colleague or
children to join
 Contact me or any staff!

35. Activities to change the
situation

37. Part 2 - Rails Girls

38. What is Rails Girls?
 A Rails tutorial for women
 “Our aim is to give tools and a
community for women to
understand technology and to
build their ideas.”
 Founded by Linda Liukas and Karri
Saarinen

39. History
 November 2011
 The first Rails Girls in Helsinki, Finland
 September 2012
 The first Rails Girls in Tokyo, Japan
 Now
 150+ cities, 220+ events worldwide

42. Rails Girls Curriculum
 Guide to install Rails
 Build your first app
 Push your app to GitHub
 Put your app online
 Apply a modern design with
Bootstrap
 Add Authentication with Devise

43. Rails Girls Cirriculum (2)
 Add profile pics with Gravatar
 Test your application with RSpec
 CD with Travis
 More advanced topics available!
 See http://guides.railsgirls.com/

44. Rails Girls in Japan
 Held in Tokyo, Kyoto, Sapporo,
Nara, Osaka, Nagoya and Matsue
 Staffed with volunteers
 Sponsored by various companies

45. Rails Girls Youth
 Rails Girls “Youth” in Krakow, Poland
 Focuses on teenagers before
making important decisions
http://blog.railsgirls.com/post/85521955069/9-surprises-of-rails-girls-youth-krakow

46. Rails Girls and Me

47. My First Rails Girls
 Rails Girls Tokyo 2nd - March 2013
 Participated as a “Girl”
http://www.atmarkit.co.jp/ait/articles/1303/04/news119.html

48. My Second Rails Girls
 Rails Girls Tokyo 3rd - October 2013
 Participated as a “Coach”
http://blog.railsgirls.jp/post/65614128686/railsgirls-tokyo-3rd

49. “
”
In learning you will
teach, and in teaching
you will learn.
PHIL COLLINS

50. At RubyKaigi 2014

51. I’m here

52. It’s your turn now

53. Thank you!