1. Don’t put them off
It is the most tempting thing in the world to find a market-based solution to your problem. You want more demand from women, so you lower costs. Cheaper tickets for girls. Done! More girls!
This is illegal in some jurisdictions, but more importantly it has incredibly cursed vibes. I run a dating startup. In the UK, 85% of dating app users are male (90% on Tinder, 80% on Bumble, Hinge somewhere in the middle). In some ways, making our service cheaper for women to use would be a dream solution to the conceptual problem of men wanting women more than vice versa.
But it isn’t something I’ve ever considered, and it isn’t something you should consider either, because the signal it generates is that you have a problem attracting women – and, in fact, that you’re so desperate you’re willing to pay them to turn up. It may sound counterintuitive, but nothing could be more off-putting. There’s a reason marketers use scarcity as a selling technique: people want what they can’t have. If you’re begging people (women) to turn up, you’re implicitly saying that your event is no good (for women).
You’ll also generate a healthy amount of male resentment at having to subsidise female attendees, which – unsurprisingly – isn’t good for men or women. Men might even expect female attendees to be grateful for the financial contribution, which creates an environment so toxic it’s unpleasant even to imagine.
2. Don’t invite known creeps
If you want to throw a good event, the first thing you must sacrifice is your desire to be everyone’s friend. Being friendly to people who make others unsafe (because they’re sex pests, predators, or just uncomfortable for others to be around) is a luxury, reserved for consumers of the social group experience. To quote in full:
Weirdo social friction is a conserved quantity. If you can deal with someone, that’s great. But if others are weirded out, it could be that the guy is universally misunderstood and maligned… or, more likely, the weirded out people are catching onto something you’re missing.
If you run shit and you aren’t aware of the global impact of someone’s inclusion, you’re dumping that person’s bullshit on someone else. You are swine and an unworthy sentinel of the polis.
Screen attendees in advance. Ask for character references if someone has weird vibes. Create a vetting circle that can blackball people. These aren’t super fun and friendly activities, but they might protect someone from having a really horrible and potentially life-ruining experience.
They also send a positive signal to women, showing that you sincerely care about their wellbeing because you’re willing to make sacrifices to protect it.
3. Think about the women you’re already featuring
A great example of a tech event with strong female representation, at least historically, is CES. Until a few years ago, women were present at a huge number of the booths, advertising tech products and considerably shifting the gender ratio of a traditionally male field.
The issue, of course, was that the women looked like this.
Actually that’s not quite true. They typically had fewer clothes on.
These women were doubtless interesting, curious, and bright. Many of them were probably interested in the tech they were promoting. But that’s not why they were there. They were there to act as human decoration for an overwhelmingly male audience.
Unfortunately, ‘male nerds and sexy women’ is the unconscious theme of many a gathering. If the most prominent female representatives of your event are known chiefly for their sexuality, you’re not likely to attract large numbers of women who feel uncomfortable promoting themselves in that way. They may feel inadequate by comparison, or as if they’ll be treated like sex objects too. It’s similar to the reason some women feel ‘icky’ about female quotas: it’s nice to be seen as a person first and a woman second.
4. Stop making it all about sex
Matchmaking events, speed dating, date auctions, etc – all potentially a lot of fun. But all of them also have a risk: drawing attention to the fact that men and women are different is a sharp reminder to many women, particularly when they’re in the demographic minority, that they’re not only seen by other attendees as individuals with personalities; they’re also perceived (and sometimes exclusively perceived) as Girls.
This can be hard to grasp: lots of men dream of being perceived through the lens of sexuality, because it isn’t the norm for them. But for a lot of women it’s ubiquitous, exhausting, and profoundly dehumanising. This isn’t true for everyone, but it’s true for enough women that the ones who self-select in will probably be unrepresentative of women as a whole. The ones who feel alienated by it might be quieter, but they’ll be sad and uncomfortable.
5. Adjust your language
Male is the universal default. Men picture a man 80% of the time they’re asked to think of a ‘person’. Caroline Criado Perez writes about this in Invisible Women:
A 2015 study identified the top five words used to refer to people in human–computer interaction papers published in 2014 and found that they are all apparently gender neutral: user, participant, person, designer and researcher. Well done, human–computer interaction academics!
But there is (of course) a catch. When study participants were instructed to think about one of these words for ten seconds and then draw an image of it, it turned out that these apparently gender-neutral words were not perceived as equally likely to be male or female.
For male participants, only ‘designer’ was interpreted as male less than 80% of the time (it was still almost 70% male). A researcher was more likely to be depicted as of no gender than as a female.
Women were slightly less gender-biased, but on the whole were still more likely to read gender-neutral words as male, with only ‘person’ and ‘participant’ (both read by about 80% of male participants as male) being about 50/50. (Invisible Women, p.9)
None of this is to say that language is evil or everyone is secretly committing thought crimes. It’s just that if you want women to be enticed by your event, you might have to go out of your way to make it sound appealing to them. ‘Come for pizza and beer’ won’t cut it.
Consider the difference between these two event descriptions.
Hi guys, come from 7.30. BYOB, +1s fine, call if you have problems.
Hi everyone! Feel free to come any time from 7.30 – bring anyone you like, plus whatever you want to drink. Get in touch any time on [my number]. Can’t wait to see you :)
It’s crude to call these ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ – outliers exist across the gender spectrum – but it’s also stupid to pretend that they don’t represent styles of communication that are typical of men and women respectively.
The thing about the second is that it’s deliberately welcoming, warm, and effusive. It’s more likely to entice people who might feel anxious about coming, who might not know others there, or who just want to feel like they’ll be made comfortable. There’s nothing wrong with blunt, effective communication in many contexts. It’s just less friendly. Women (and, truthfully, most men) like to feel as if their presence is wanted, not simply tolerated.
6. Accommodate women’s needs
Women are like men in many ways. They are also unlike men in many ways. I have listed some of these differences below.
Women need more toilet facilities
If your event is all day and it’s somewhere in the wilderness, women are likely to find that uniquely challenging.
Women take more responsibility for childcare
If lots of people your age have babies or children, and there’s no way for babies or children to get involved in your event, unless whatever you’re doing is specifically for women then most of your attendees will probably be male.
Women have busier social lives
Partly due to taking more responsibility for childcare (and care of other family members), partly for other reasons, women’s schedules typically – again, we are generalising – fill up before men’s do. If you throw an event at short notice, the people most likely to turn up will be single men. Ask me how I know.
7. Consider safety
A cliché that bears repeating: most of the time, the worst thing that can happen to a man at an event with male strangers is that he feels unwelcome or stupid. The worst thing that can happen to a woman at an event with male strangers hardly bears thinking about. This is quadruply true if your event involves staying overnight, particularly in combination with drugs or alcohol.
An example: you might be happy to share a bedroom with mixed-sex strangers, but this doesn’t mean that women will be. For events that span multiple days, having at least one separate, secure environment for women is essential. They don’t have to use it. They just need to know that there’s somewhere they can go if they need a break from male attention, or need to be safe whilst they’re physically or emotionally vulnerable.
I’ve written this quickly in response to a request, so there are likely to be many ideas I’ve missed. I might add more as they come to mind, and suggestions are always welcome.
If you want help making your event more female-friendly, drop me a line here.