How To Recruit Women Into Your Atheist Group

“If we see enough pink, we will stop the car.”

Wait what? Women drive?

Does she mean, “pink, scented paper” or, “pink scented paper”? There’s a distinct difference. And one of them is more likely to attract more men than women.

::ducking:: ::running::

Blanket dismissal of her comments.

Insensitive sexist comment about personal appearance.

Half apology.

Not all women love the color pink. I’ve known some that hate it. My daughter isn’t that big on pink either and it’s far from her favorite color.

That was good–I liked her final point, though I wish it had been longer.
Atheist groups don’t need to change their content or advertising to appeal to women and minorities. It will repel more than it attracts.

Atheists for adorable things…
Kawaii!! I love it.

Also you might want to lay in a supply of herbal or fruity teas, much preferred over icky coffee.

Did she cover glitter… yeah… great.

Stuffed animals were left out of the discussion even though they appear in the background of the video, offer them as door prizes. The best kind are the ones won by guys throwing softballs at metal milk bottles, gals really dig that, conciser setting up a booth so they can watch the guys winning them.

Really they are simple creatures, easily corrupted, followers by nature. We should have no problem luring them in. As a bonus they are handy for cleaning up after meetings, they enjoy it, you would be doing them a favor.

Or that other thing at the end.

She reminds me a bit of Willow in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

There are plenty of women in my atheist group, and no pink scrapbooked ponies to be found, unfortunately. Easiest way to recruit women into your group, especially if there are a ton of men? Men have wives, girlfriends, sisters, and other acquaintances with two X chromosomes. Just encourage them to let them tag along to meetings or shindigs or what have you. No posters of George Clooney needed.

However, you might want to have a Tetris tournament once in a while to draw in a flock. Women love Tetris.

cutthroatjane: ?

Maybe someone here can work for you? (check the right hand bar)
http://missouriatheists.org/

If she thought she was going to get her last point across more effectively by prefacing it with the first three points, she miserably failed!

I really liked it, and I thought she made a good point. I only wish she would have expanded on the last part a couple of sentences more, but perhaps the extreme simplicity and brevity was her point as well.

I already treat all people of any of the many genders as she described at the end, but the problem remains that I can’t treat them one way or another if they don’t show up.

Over half of my atheist meetup group are women, but I guess that’s atypical. Is the problem that women don’t show up for atheist groups at all, or they do and are driven off by some dumbass male, or what?

Bad satirical joke…?

Coming from a woman, please don’t take this seriously.

I kinda figured that she was being sarcastic and laughed all the way through it.

I’m a stupid male and didn’t get it till right near the end. I kept thinking “I’m going to show this to my daughters so they can be more outraged than me.” Then I got it. The last 10 seconds clinched it.

From what I saw there are very few atheist women.
This can be a problem.
As for recruiting I believe that independent women are more likely to join.

OMG PONIES!!!!!!!!!!! WTF!! ok. I am done with exclamation points. Not all chicks love the shit out of ponies or scrap booking or pink and btw that was not muave it was like totally lavender for sure. I will agree on the sugar and would come to an Atheist meeting for an invisible unicorn. I don’t take anyone seriously with a floral print couch.

Loved her and the vid.

We certainly would not use pink again because it just attracted loads of gays who wanted us to all wear floral shirts at every meeting and to decorate all meeting places with flowers, balloons and ribbons.

One guy I met told me that he was sick of girls at meetings because they just kept hitting on him. Nice bloke named Brad Mitt or something like that. Anyway he left the group and went to California. So I guess that is the last we’ll here from him.

Just trolling.

Oh and on the subject of women driving. In Saudi Arabia they don’t. Well at least not on their own.

As if having SE Cupp represent us on the national stage wasn’t bad enough, now we have Hemant mocking the movement to draw in more atheist females. Well, he’s not so much mocking the movement as mocking this person’s advice, but it has the same end effect – making a joke out of female atheists.

At most atheist meetups I’ve been to, there’s roughly one female for every 5-10 males, and sometimes the odds aren’t even that good. I was the sole female in my local group, until I stopped going, largely because one member in particular made neverending chauvanistic, sexist, and offensive comments about women (for example, telling his 10-year-old son that any woman in the military must be a “bull dyke” and saying that Christian women were nothing more than “brainless baby factories”).

The incredibly lopsided representation of women in the atheist community is a real problem, and it’s something that I think needs to be addressed more in depth.

(Hemant says: Stacy, I’m not mocking this video at all. I think she makes a great point. There are some things people do to reach out to women that are downright offensive to many of the women who might be inclined to join our groups. It’s not always easy to do, when a group is overwhelmingly male, but we do need to put serious thought into the issue if women are feeling excluded.)

No offense meant to anyone of any gender, but i saw this as obvious satire from the beginning and taken as such nearly laughed myself off of my chair. At our local free thinkers group there is a slight disparity in men to women, but it isn’t bad. It likely helps that the group was primarily started by a woman (thank you again for doing so Syrah) and for those with children there is often childcare available at most gatherings and meetings. Far from the only consideration, but something to look into for groups trying to attract more women to their group. Did some people really think a suggestion of using more pink to appeal to women wasn’t in jest? Really?

“We just love the shit out of ponies.” Still makes me laugh just remembering it.

I’m SO starting a Scrapbooking Atheists group.

http://www.leslemora.com/leslemora/2011/2/1/freethinkers-unite.html

Kristi, best go back and watch the last minute. That’s when she makes her point,and a very good one it is.

Miko Says:

“The gender disparity in atheist groups (and in other radical groups) is troubling and does need to be approached dialectically”

Actually, nope!

As a female atheist, I can speak only for myself and a few friends, but here is our consensus:
Not having a heavenly life to look forward to – we are making the most of this one.
With jobs, university, home, garden, social life, hobbies, children and shovelling snow (arggh), who has time for more than the occasional blog, support of people like Elisabeth S-Wolff and Geert Wilders, spending cash for a good cause etc?

p.s. Before I get jumped on for the children coming so far down on my list -once they are grown – they don’t need me most of the time.

Has anyone seen Conservapedia’s essay entitled “Ponies vs. atheism – Ponies win” at http://www.conservapedia.com/Essay:_Ponies_vs._atheism_-_Ponies_win