At technical community gatherings, Meetups, or events, the majority of attendees and speakers tend to be men. Women often feel uncomfortable attending such events, leading women in technology to start technical communities for only for women. Although the purpose of these women-in-tech communities is to help more women feel welcomed and create equality between men and women in the industry, these communities might be inadvertently doing the exact opposite. In this talk, we share perspectives on gender diversity in technology, and we discuss the value of participating in mixed-gender Meetups. We also share insights from AWS user communities worldwide, and we discuss steps we take to make our AWS community in Israel—one of the largest in the world, with over 6,000 members—more inclusive. This session is part of re:Invent Developer Community Day, a series led by AWS enthusiasts who share first-hand, technical insights on trending topics.

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Making AWS User Communities
More Inclusive
Niv Yungelson
DevOps Engineer
Symantec
D V C 2 0 1

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Who Am I?
• Niv Yungelson
• DevOps Leader at Skycure – now Symantec
• From Tel Aviv, Israel
• Psychology student
• AWS Israel Community Leader

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Today I will talk about …
• Women-only communities
• Affirmative action – does it help?
• My perspective and opinion, backed by research
• Next steps for gender equality

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AWS Israel Community
• Founded - Feb 2013
• More than 80 meetups with ~6000 members
• Monthly meetups
• No marketing – from the community, for the community
• All AWS: AI, big data, serverless, containers, and so on

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Women in tech
• AWS Israel user community attendance – roughly 3 women & 70 men
• Less than 20% of employees in tech positions in the US are women
• In Israel, women comprise 26% of employees (3% increase from 2017)

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Advantages of women-only communities
• Introduce more women to the industry
• Help women get started with their career
• Create an environment where women feel comfortable

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Disadvantages of women-only communities
• They aren’t representative of real workplace environments
• Women who go to women-only events tend not to come to mixed
gender events
• Missing content that is shared in gender-mixed events
• Missing the chance to show themselves and to share their knowledge with everyone
• They are women only

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Taking the next step toward a more inclusive
community
• Proactively encourage women to participate
• Joining women-only communities and inviting them to come
• Looking for women speakers to talk in gender-mixed communities
• Collaborating with women-only community leaders

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Rick and Morty’s affirmative action
Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland added
four new female writers
The move created a 50–50 male-female
split.

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What can be done?
• Affirmative action
• Expanding the funnel
• Helping children understand that they can choose their interests regardless of their gender

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“Mehane Meshutaf” project
• Non-profit organization that promotes awareness and critical thinking
about gender stereotypes
• Strong emphasis on how unconscious biases and social pressure shape
our choices
• Workshops for both teenage girls and boys, mostly eighth/ninth grade
- right before they choose high school majors

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What can be done?
• Affirmative action
• Widen the funnel
• Helping children understand that they can choose their interests regardless of their gender
• Tightening the demographic gaps

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Karmiel compared with Tel Aviv

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Appleseeds Academy

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Appleseeds Academy

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What can be done?
• Affirmative action
• Widen the funnel
• Helping children understand that they can choose their interests regardless of their gender
• Tightening the demographic gaps
• Creating a safe and comfortable environment

26. Thank you!
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Niv Yungelson
niv_Yungelson@symantec.com

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