PyMoms: Including mothers in the tech community
Kate MacInnis
- Audience level:
- Novice
- Category:
- Community
Description
PyladiesATX has formed a subgroup specifically to address the needs and visibility of its members with children, PyMoms. PyMoms holds meetups with childcare to create an inclusive atmosphere for women with children, and is reaching a diverse group of women, including young mothers, career-changers, entrepreneurs, and established mothers in technology.
Abstract
At PyTexas in September 2014, Kate MacInnis and Irma Kramer had a hallway track conversation where they realized that they didn't feel quite comfortable in many "Women in Tech" spaces, because those felt designed for young women without children or other family responsibilities. We began to discover that many mothers in tech felt isolated, and that this was particularly hard on women who were trying to change careers into tech, who could start to feel like they were the only ones in the group with children, when it was far from the truth! We created PyMoms to increase the visibility of mothers in our group, to help support one another, and allow us to work together on projects that fit into a mom's life (so, less hackathon and more once-a-month-hackafternoon).
This poster will show the need that we identified, a summary of our activities since PyMoms' inception, and how these have furthered our goals. Of particular interest is the fact that several women have begun attending the regular Pyladies meetups after PyMoms made it clear that they weren't going to be the only ones there that had kids.
PyCon 2016 in Portland, OR is a production of the 