The Python community has been making efforts in improving the diversity and representation among its members. There are examples of success stories such as PyCon US Charlas, PyLadies, Djangonaut, and Django Girls. Yet in the Python podcast community, women are still underrepresented, making up only 17% of invited guests among the popular podcast series. Being a guest in a podcast is a privilege, and an opportunity to influence the Python community. There are many women and underrepresented group members who have made impactful contributions to the Python community globally, and they deserve the recognition and to be heard by the rest of us. Disheartened by the lack of representation by women on Python podcasts, and inspired by others who have shown us how diversity in the community can be improved through intentionality, we decided to start a podcast with a goal to highlight their voices so that they could receive the recognition they deserve. In this talk,earn about them, and about our podcast series. We’ll also share how you can further help out cause in improving representation and diversity in the Python community.

Goal

To raise awareness of the underrepresentation of certain groups, especially women. To acknowledge the progress made by the Python community and what can be done further to continue the improvement.

Target Audience

Anyone who cares about the diversity and inclusion progression in the Python community. Community leaders who want to be allies.

Outline

Diversity in Python community, examples (5 minutes)

• PyCon US speakers: from 1% in 2011 to 40% in 2016 -Efforts in improving diversity in the Python community: Charlas, PyLadies, DjangoGirls, Djangonaut

How are those efforts successful? (5 minutes)

• Intentionality: starts with recognizing the issue and clear intention and goal in improving the situation
• Outreach: targeted and direct outreach to underrepresented, explicit invitation asking underrepresented group members to participate in
• Opportunity: providing opportunities and tools for women to succeed

In Podcast (3 minutes)

• Since there were no stats, we collected our own data by scraping three most popular Python Podcasts Collected using Python, beautiful soup, and Datasette
• Our result shows that among the three podcasts that have been running for years, women made up only 17% of invited guests, whereas there were the same men who appeared more frequently on the same shows

Why is ithis important (5 minutes)

• Podcast guest is influential
• Women and underrepresented group members deserve to be seen and heard
• Representation creates inspirations. Lack of representation = lost opportunity to inspire women to further participate in the community

6 months of our podcasts (4 minutes)

• Share public reactions and support from our launch
• Karolina Ladino: in Colombia, women has to be accompanied by husband, brothers to come to meetups, otherwise it’s not safe for them to come alone.
• Joanna Jablonski: making impact in Python community through documentation and developer education

How you can help(3 minutes)

• Listen to their stories
• Actively promote and boost voices from women and underrepresented group members
• Suggest people to interview