About

Mission

The mission of CallbackWomen is to radically expand gender diversity at the podium of professional programmers’ conferences. It’s about all genders underrepresented in tech, including non-binary, gender nonconforming, trans women, trans men, cis women, and more.

CallbackWomen remakes norms. Since 2013, CallbackWomen’s work of advocacy, education, support, and promotion has been an influential change agent.

What We Do

CallbackWomen focus is on serving organizers and speakers. The testimonials page shares individual stories of its impact, from the perspectives of a long-time conference organizer and speakers.

Organizers

• Providing them an audience of 4,600 followers eager to learn about their Calls for Proposals (CFPs) and diversity initiatives
• Introducing them to resources & experts
• Educating them about how caregiving responsibilies, pay gap, safety, intersectionality, etc constrain marginalized people’s participation
• Advocating for innovative ways to increase diversity among attendees
• Pushing back on assumptions about gender, experience, and qualifications
• Amplifing their fellow conference organizers’ diversity and diversity commitments, models, and successes
• Educating them about the Code of Conduct Pledge (aka #cocpledge) impact on sponsorship, ticket sales, volunteerism, and speaker participation
• Supporting them in adopting codes of conduct (CoCs), and showing conference organizers handling CoC enforcement well
• Normalizing expectations of gender diversity at the podium
• Exposing them to highly qualified speakers who are women, as well as (upon individuals’ permission) genderqueer & gender non-conforming

Speakers

• Amassing a curated list for them of 1,300+ conferences whose focus is on developers talking to developers
• Finding for them ~90/mo speaking opportunities via those conferences’ Calls for Proposals (CFPs)
• Encouraging audiences to recommend highly qualified women
• Validating self-promotion of talks & ideas
• Drawing attention to rave reviews
• Highlighting for them conferences with codes of conduct* Promoting their talents as speakers
• Holding workshops, talks, panels, and hangouts for prospective speakers
• Addressing their doubts about whether they’re qualified

Note

CallbackWomen is about every person whose gender is underrepresented in tech. Women encompasses all women, including transgender women and cis women. Gender non-binary encompasses people who are genderqueer, gender non-conforming, and many others ¹. Transgender men are men.

Being non-consensually positioned in a context called *Women implictly misgenders a gender non-binary person or a trans man. CallbackWomen enthusiastically promotes the work of speakers who are gender non-binary and speakers who are trans men, if the speaker has given personal consent to.