The Guide to Black and Hispanic Women in Web Design

It started this morning with a TrackBack on Eric Meyer’s blog from Dori asking why is Eric, a man doing on a panel about women in web design?

Now, to me, it’s such an obvious point. No need to discuss it here. But theeeeeeeen, I saw a comment from the panel’s organizer, Molly Holzschlag, about why she asked Eric, and who else is on the panel.

An excerpt of Molly’s comments:

… All joking aside, Eric’s site is where the debate really took on heat ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù he asked for a ‘CSS Luminary’ to step in and take on a book that he couldn’t write ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù and the conversation took on a life of its own.

So, just to set the record straight, on the panel we have:

• Maxine Sherrine, an Australian woman who has been a leader in the standards movement in her part of the world for some time now. She’s representing the International woman.
• Nancy Massey, a woman from the U.S. who is in her fifties and has had a long history in I.T. and is now a web accessibility specialist. She is representing the older woman who has come up through the ranks.
• Min Jung Kim, an Asian-American woman in technology who is representing a woman of color coming of age in a technical world.

Interesting to note: I had a very difficult time finding an African-American or Hispanic woman who has skills in web design / blogging to join us. [emphasis mine]

Um … gee, I found this one fairly easily. And here are four more. And look! A Latina. And maybe they know some others in the field. And what do ya know? There’s a whole black design organization. Maybe there’s a couple in there? Maybe a call for speakers on a well-trafficked blog with an explicit request for black and Hispanic women (something like “Black and Hispanic women are especially encouraged to submit their resumes.”) would have added some candidates to the pool?

I’m not saying this panel had to include a black or Hispanic woman. But since Ms. Holzschlag brought up the diversity point, and specifically said it was “very difficult” I have to take her to task. It’s hard for me to believe that it was so much harder to find one of ‘us’ than it was to find a 50-something woman in the industry. (Maybe that “extend your network” concept isn’t such a bad idea?)

I’m sure there’s a back-story about planning this panel here that I’m not privvy to (time constraints, personal networks, small # of black folks in the Bay Area, etc). So I say this with all due respect and with some significant benefit-of-the-doubt giving.

And since bitching about things doesn’t do any good — ACTUALLY DOING something does — I’m going to kick it off here: The Guide to Black and Hispanic Women in Web Design. Know someone who’s doing her thang in the web world? Drop a line.