[ripe-list] Gender politics at RIPE

> On 24 Oct 2016, at 16:52, Malcolm Hutty <malcolm at linx.net> wrote:
> I do take issue with the speaker's personal claim that we should aim to
> "be better than our industry" and that we should measure success by
> whether female participation more closely matched 50% than matched
> female participation in our industry. And I'm worried by his call for
> the programme committee to act to move us in that direction.

I actually agree with Shane, but also think you have misunderstood his “call”.

I do think we, as a community (and by extension, society) should aim to be better than the general status quo. We should be aiming higher.

As for his “call”, he did not make any suggestions on how to do this. From my point of view, if it not about filling quotas, but more about encouraging more females to participate. That does not mean that better talks from males are overlooked.. it just means that the community needs to think about how to encourage and make the environment much more welcoming to females. Open to all is the right thing to do, but it needs to be better than that.

My own personal interest is looking at tackling this at a much earlier age - because IMHO, this is more of a societal issue which seeps into the industries we work in… however we do need to work at this at both ends - young age and those already in the industry.

Regards
Denesh

> I think we all know where this is going; we've all seen this kind of
> gender politics in other spheres.
> 
> Here is my credo. I believe that one of the positive characteristics of
> the RIPE community is that it is open to, and welcoming of, all
> participants. Our community has a wholly admirable tradition of robust
> discussion of ideas, exclusively on the basis of the ideas themselves,
> where contributions are weighed solely according to their own merits and
> not according to irrelevant characteristics of the speaker such as race,
> sex, nationality, or even employer or job title.
> 
> That is something of which I think we should be proud, and we should
> jealously guard it against ideological attempts to introduce changes
> that would undermine it.
> 
> If we go down a path that asks first for an assessment of the speaker's
> "diversity" (meaning their sex, race, and so forth), that would be a
> step backwards.
> 
> To the female speaker who said she would feel more welcome if there were
> more female participants, I say this: I hope you feel welcome already.
> You are very welcome, as is everyone. And I hope nobody would judge how
> welcome they are as a zero-sum game in competition with some other group
> or tribe.
> 
> I hope the Programme Committee does not start to say that contributions
> from men are less interesting or that presentations by men are less
> welcome because "we've got enough of you already", as is the clear if
> unspoken message of any attempt to artificially skew participation.
> 
> Kind Regards,
> 
> Malcolm.
> 
> -- 
>            Malcolm Hutty | tel: +44 20 7645 3523
>   Head of Public Affairs | Read the LINX Public Affairs blog
> London Internet Exchange | http://publicaffairs.linx.net/
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