And how comes there aren’t any Black Geek Dinners?

I don’t know, ask an economist.

While the Leeds GeekUp group are a lovely bunch of people, I can understand why women would prefer their own forum. As guys we generally talk about “guy stuff” once we’re bored with computers, so by the same logic women would prefer to talk about “girl stuff”. I know that’s a bit of an over-simplification, and not all you geeky girls read Heat magazine and talk about shoes (or do you? :), but you get where I’m coming from right?

As for the Hodge implying that Imran’s motives for starting this female-only forum are questionable, I only have one thing to say… sounds like you’re jealous you didn’t think of it :P

Gay Geek Dinners here we come. And how comes there aren’t any Black Geek Dinners?

It is also an issue which does not always submit to simplistic logical analysis. The Leeds Girl Geek Dinners costs £15 to attend. GeekUp is free. I attend both and would find it hard to explain why I feel motivated to spend £15 to go to Leeds Girl Geek Dinners. I also wouldn’t know where to begin in justifying why I think it is a good thing to anyone who can’t see the value or thinks it is somehow damaging to the very cause of female geeks.

I thought you might be interested to know that Sarah Blow has recently posted a post that touches on some of this stuff and discusses the recent publication of a ‘European Code of Best Practices for Women and ICT’
http://girlygeekdom.blogspot.com/2009/03/european-code-of-best-practices-for.html

I’m Liz Cable of Reach Further, and am organising the Women on the Web conferences, and series of seminars http://womenontheweb.wordpress.com for Forward Ladies, a networking group of 3,500 women in Leeds and West Yorkshire, who run their own businesses http://www.forwardladies.com

I chose to run this event through Forward Ladies because I wanted women to be absolutely sure they are welcome. Men are welcome to be members of Forward Ladies, and to come to the events too.

My motivation is simple. Three facts:

1.According to a 2009 national computer centre survey, 1 in 5 women over 45 have never been on the internet.
2.Only 6% of businesses in Leeds are owned by women.
3.The average age at which a woman starts a business is 42.

This means, to me, that there is a group of women of a certain age with the aspiration to start a business, but a lack of knowledge, and they need supporting.

That’s it. I hope you can support me in supporting them.

The fact that you are able to Twitter and to blog about this, means that you have a voice that they haven’t got. Yet.

I take your point about men being welcome at women’s events, and you’re right there must be a demand for them otherwise so many women wouldn’t go!

When I talked about office banter, I didn’t mean it made for a sexually hostile workplace. In my experience some men – usually youngish, single blokes – don’t really know where to draw the line when it comes to discussing women. It’s not deliberate on their part and the rest of the time they’re great fun and great workmates. I think it’s probably management’s job to set the boundaries – if the manager doesn’t care then the behaviour continues.

I don’t think this is a problem specific to tech however. I’d like to think that if there was any real sexism or if the jokes went too far it would be dealt with just like anywhere else.

as I said on my post, if all the girls at the geek girl dinner voted with there feet and attended geekup they would out number the blokes at least 2:1, they would still have the majority and the local community would be a better place for it.

Women are voting with their feet – regardless of gender or access issues, GGDs clearly meet a need and I’m really happy that we’re able to meet that need and help make a difference :)

if your going to promote these women only events and run them, then make sure you let them know about the events where anyone is free to go