It's probably worth it in your case, but you'll need to be very careful about planning how it directly gives you an increase in return on investment. College is ridiculously expensive in America nowadays, and I would be very hesitant to go back if I wasn't certain it would lead to a drastic increase in income.
Sorry for my lack of clarity. I believe that the ratios should align for sure, and I believe that if they don't, that due diligence wasn't done, potentially with some direct or indirect form of prejudice (which cannot be discerned without knowing the details of how recruitment efforts took place). I also don't mean to derail the importance of human rights or equality on any particular playing field, I literally just meant that tech is what people are going there to discuss and learn about. While human rights and reflecting community proportions is certainly a part of it, I highly doubt that the intent of any tech conference is to primarily give keynotes on human rights.
What a weird and frustrating circumstance to be in. It's definitely disappointing that the organizers could not work through this. I understand that women candidates may be disproportionately hard to line up, but is there any evidence that the promoters put in the extra effort to find them? More importantly, should they be obligated to do so in the first place when the aim of the conference is quality in technology: nothing more, nothing less? Optimizing for non-sex factors, you would expect the selected lineup to more or less match the proportions of notable men and women in the space. If that holds true, then the issue is much further up the line in this case: there are still not enough women in technology. Do we cancel future events solely on this premise? Seems like a terrible idea to me.
I wish I could say the same. I seem to be the only one of my friends willing to take a hard stance on these things. They view the situation as it still being better than just not playing a new video game, even though they might be getting screwed over. It’s really frustrating to be honest, because I can tell I’ve ended up ostracizing myself over it.
It certainly doesn't strike as a surprise that an American teacher would hit her breaking point with the system and venture elsewhere. Teachers have largely lost control of the autonomy required to do their jobs successfully. There's more and more paperwork every year, and both parents and public admin seem less satisfied with the output on their pupils in the process. Seems like a recipe for disaster: a recurring loop of deterioration.