[diversity] Options for gender on meeting registration
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Shane Kerr
shane at time-travellers.org
Fri Jun 2 13:46:03 CEST 2017
Amanda, [ Sorry for the long mail. I'm feeling to lazy to trim properly. ] At 2017-06-02 10:43:34 +0200 Amanda Gowland <agowland at ripe.net> wrote: > Hey Shane, > > On 02/06/17 10:02, Shane Kerr wrote: > > Amanda & everyone else, > > > > At 2017-06-01 12:05:00 +0200 > > Amanda Gowland <agowland at ripe.net> wrote: > > > >> We have an opportunity to include a question on the meeting reg software > >> in time for RIPE 75, but we need input by this coming Monday (hard > >> deadline) if we want to have something in place. > >> > >> It's a chance to start gathering those metrics early. Question is, what > >> do we want to include? One suggestion: > >> > >> What is your gender?* > >> > >> ☐ Female > >> > >> ☐ Male > >> > >> ☐ Non-binary/ third gender > >> > >> ☐ Prefer to self-describe _________________ > >> > >> ☐ Prefer not to say > >> > >> *And then we can have a pop-up info window to explain why we're asking > >> this question: > >> > >> "We are committed to increasing diversity and inclusion at RIPE > >> Meetings. One way we're doing this is to gather data to see where we > >> need to improve. This data will only be used anonymously for metric > >> benchmarking." > >> > >> Happy to hear your thoughts (soon please) so we can include this in our > >> discussion with the developers. > > Our approach should depend on whether we care about gender data or > > diversity data. > > > > -------- > > > > My initial idea was to gather gender data, as an initial proxy for > > diversity data. The recommendation that I received was three options: > > > > * Female > > * Male > > * Fill-in-the-blank ("self-described" above > > > > If we focus on gender data, I would prefer that making any choice be > > opt-in, rather than "prefer not to say" be a 4th choice. So, the UI > > might look something like: > > > > [ ] Provide optional gender information [why this is important pop-up] > > ( ) Female > > ( ) Male > > ( ) ________________ > > > > I don't know enough about gender issues to say whether having a > > non-binary/third-gender option is a good idea, but on the face of it > > keeping it as simple as possible makes sense to me. > The suggestion I put forward was the result of some research into the > best (most respectful, inclusive) way to ask the question in surveys. > Simplicity is doable, but I just want to make sure that we don't > sacrifice inclusion for simplicity. Okay, if we decide to focus on gender and it makes more sense to include non-binary/third-gender as an option, then we should do it. I do think that presenting all options under a single "opt-in" checkbox makes more sense than including "prefer not to say" as an option. Logically there are two things going on: 1. The attendee decides to opt-in, and 2. The attendee provides the information. > > I recognize that a fill-in-the-blank field will complicate statistics, > > but I think it is probably the best that we can do. > > > > -------- > > > > Alternately, we may decide that we should look at diversity instead of > > gender. This approach was suggested during the workshop that we had > > before RIPE 74. The idea is more like this: > > > > [ ] I consider myself a part of an under-represented group at RIPE > > (Check all that apply.) [why this is important pop-up] > > [ ] Gender > > ( ) Female > > ( ) Male > > ( ) _________________ > > ( ) Prefer not to say > > [ ] Sexual orientation > > [ ] Religion > > [ ] Race or ethnic origin > > [ ] _____________________ > > > > This can gather gender statistics, but also provides some insight into > > how many people think they are under-represented and for what reason. > > > > I pulled the proposed list here from the RIPE Code of Conduct. I am in > > no way wedded to it, and take no offense if you think it is crap. > I think we need to have a discussion about the pros/cons of having the > question worded this way. Yes. Certainly not something that we can do in the next 3 hours. :) > My preference would be to limit the question to gender for RIPE 75 so at > least we can start and then expand to other aspects of > diversity/inclusion when we have more time to figure out the best way to > phrase the question. The problem is that if we decide to move to a style where we ask people to self-identify as belonging to an under-represented group, then we cannot compare the results of that with the RIPE 75 gender-only data. Still, I guess I support your proposal for two reasons: 1. Something is better than nothing, which is what we have now. ;) 2. It provides a message that we take diversity seriously have have started doing something to improve the situation. > > Note that some people may prefer to say that they are in an > > under-represented gender but not wish to provide any more information. > > So the "Prefer not to say" option returns, in a slightly different > > context. > > > > -------- > > > > What is important is that we try to collect data in a way that we can > > maintain a series over time and have a reasonable comparison between > > meetings. That means we should try to get it right. :) > > > > We has assumed that we would NOT be able to add this for RIPE 75, > > because of the short timelines involved in the software. If we think it > > is important, then we can go for it. I am not sure that we can get it > > correct today. :( I'm happy to join a call/chat later today or early > > next week if that makes sense. (Not Monday though, because it's a > > public holiday here and I'm on a long weekend away. I'm surprised at > > the Monday hard deadline since I expected that the RIPE NCC would be > > off on Monday too!) > We're not working on Monday either, Martina wanted us to have the > content ready for Tuesday when she meets with SWE so that they can let > us know what's possible. So, it's not guaranteed that we can have > anything in place for RIPE 75...but certainly keeping the question > limited in scope (for now) will give us more of a chance of having > something in place at all. Understood. Have a good weekend! Cheers, -- Shane -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 833 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digitale handtekening URL: <https://lists.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/diversity/attachments/20170602/c50b7249/attachment.sig>
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