PyCon UK 2019

Do we have a diversity problem in Python community?
2019-09-15 , Assembly Room

Python community cares about diversity. So do we still have a problem in, especially gender, diversity? We will look at some data and see if there’s a true problem, discuss what the problem may be and how to fix it.


The diversity statement quoted as follows: “The Python Software Foundation and the global Python community welcome and encourage participation by everyone. Our community is based on mutual respect, tolerance, and encouragement, and we are working to help each other live up to these principles. We want our community to be more diverse: whoever you are, and whatever your background, we welcome you.”

Diversity, big deal! As an active members and event organisers (and also on the minority side of the gender) in the Python community, we have alway been concern by the question of: Do we truly have a problem in diversity? Especially, gender diversity. We would like to find out the truth, by data science, and see if we can find a clue why and how we can fix it.

First, we will show the research others did regarding the representation of women in the R and Python communities [1]. Then, we will show the research that we did based on our experience and statistic. Including static analysis of the speakers diversity (regarding gender) at major PyCon and PyData conferences. Finally, as we all care about diversity and want improvements, we would like to find out the reason and what we can do about it. We would propose what we, the minorities and allies, could do against this seemingly unbalance situation and make the community better.

This talk is for all that who cares about diversity in our community.

[1] https://reshamas.github.io/why-women-are-flourishing-in-r-community-but-lagging-in-python/


Is your proposal suitable for beginners?: yes

Cheuk constantly contributes to the community by giving AI and deep learning workshops, organize sprints for open source projects, volunteering at Datakind for charities. At the same time contribute to open source projects including Pandas, Keras, Scikit-learn and Dateutil. Cheuk has also been a guest speaker at University of Oxford and Queen Mary University of London, and various conferences including PyData in Amsterdam and Berlin, PyCon in Israel, UK and Germany, EuroPython and PyLondinium. Believing in gender equality, Cheuk is currently a co-organizer of AI club for Gender Minorities to support Tech Diversity and Inclusion.

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