That’s David, KD2OAH , who posted this thread on reddit. Unsurprisingly, some hams were iffy and curmedgoney about the idea of a Discord (which is cancer, by the way, see below or here 🙄) when there’s already a reddit IRC. He also initially wanted it to be for Young Hams on Long Island, NY, but seeing that there was 1.) there’s probably not a lot of young hams on Long Island and 2.) probably no discord for young people in ham radio at all and, I asked him, among others, to extend it to the whole ham-o-sphere. That lead to the creation of the Young Hams discord chat. It was way more popular than David thought, currently at 70 active members (and 200 members total), dozens of chat rooms, a few voice chat rooms, a gaming hams spinoff and it’s all almost too hard to keep up with at times, which is a great thing.
There are several youth oriented US radio clubs and organizations [1][2][3][4] but they’ve all been created by older hams as an initiative to attract youth into the hobby1. They have served their purpose well, as now the youth are beginning to form their own clubs.
There is no hard and fast age rule: I’m 26, and some of our members are in their late 30s. Most members are either in high school or college.
If you don’t remember the cold war, are two standard deviations less than the mean age of radio amateurs, or are a strong supporter of youth in the hobby, then you are welcome to join. YARC doesn’t discriminate, but maybe don’t go on rants starting with ‘BACK IN MY DAY….’
And all political discussion can be held in #politics.
Many more cool things to come soon!
🆒 1. Youngsters on the Air (YOTA) is the only other club I know of that was started by and for young hams. It’s centered around IARU Region 1 – Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Northern Asia.↩
Yesterday was International Women’s day, and while lying in bed last night, I had a thought about all the times I’ve seen women at my local radio clubs….
WA0FYA had a female treasurer, a female secretary, and the secretary’s daughter would frequently attend, and that was it.
Occasionally a female would show up to W0EEE events and/or meetings, usually a friend of one of the male members, but we never had a solid attendance or interest by females
At SLSRC, the current president’s wife is on a number of committee chairs, and the secretary is female, and about 10% of the 200 or so members are women, usually there are one or two per meeting
At one particular club meeting, a twenty-something non-licensed woman showed up, and was hounded at the end of the meeting by a few club members lambasting about how there aren’t enough “YLs in ham radio” and that this person should help us figure out why… he didn’t realize he was a part of the problem, and the impetus for this post.
And that’s about it. Every hamfest, convention, meeting, field day, contest, and contact I’ve made, I’ve always seen a massive disparity in female involvement and inclusion. I won’t explain why here, just because STEM think tanks have beaten that horse nearly dead [1][2][3][4][5][6]. Ham radio is a STEM hobby after all, and shares a lot of characteristics with the industry.
Instead, I want to explain in some simple terms how to be more engaging and welcoming to young women in ham radio. This applies mainly to young women coming into ham radio for the first time, but can also generally apply to women of any age.
We know ham radio is a male dominated hobby. There aren’t good numbers on it, but one ARRL article mentioned women represent 15% of the US ham population, with N8RMA’s 2017 State of Amateur Radio survey showing the average ham has had a license for 32 years!! (also go take this year’s if you haven’t already!)
This is the first barrier to interest from both young people, and women. Why would any young person, woman or not, want to spend their time with a bunch of snoring geriatrics[1]?
Ham radio has some work to do to help take on the in induction of women into STEM (now that parents are becoming less like their parents and so on, encouraging and exposing their daughters to do traditionally boyish, nerdy, and sciencey things, and that schools and governments are heavily pushing STEM initiatives to the current generation), so here’s a list of things what we as ham radio leaders should avoid, and should do.
How to Attract & Retain Women in Ham Radio
Don’ts:
Avoid divisive behavior
Reduce or remove the use of the terms YL and XYL when speaking to women (or anyone), especially to newcomers[2]
Don’t call attention to the fact she is a woman in a room full of men
This is seconded by Jesten (my fiancée)…seriously, women already know they’re in the minority, so avoid mentioning that.
Don’t assume that a woman joining your club will be immediately interested in driving for other female membership
Avoid sexist humor in public groups on the internet
Rescind traditional gender expectations and stereotypes
Understand and avoid the double bind stereotype – the stereotype that women are nice, kind and compassionate, which are contrarian to tough and decisive stereotypes about leadership. We think as female leaders are controlling, aggressive, and mean, whilst male leaders are ambitious and strong.
As leaders, have zero tolerance of stereotypes from membership
Dos:
Be welcoming and friendly to all newcomers
Be a storyteller
Anecdotal evidence points to women having a strong interest in the connections between engineering (ham radio) and how it helps the world, so talk about how ham radio saves lives and how hams invented today’s wifi and cellular systems.
All astronauts are strongly encouraged (maybe even required) to get amateur radio licenses, including female astronauts. This makes a good talking point.
[1] I attended a meeting recently where someone was snoring during the presentation, and nobody did anything about it since it’s apparently how they’ve always attended every meeting…wtf?
[2] This has been getting a lot of flak in some groups, with the counterargument that “YL just means Young Lady, what’s wrong with that?” What’s wrong is 1) that it’s jargon, which should always be avoided with new people, and 2) it minimizes and ostracizes women, with the definition of young lady being a being woman not far advanced with life aka girls. Additionally, IMO, anything that portrays delineation or divisive attention to females should be avoided.
