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@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.
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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.
I recognize that a fill-in-the-blank field will complicate statistics, but I think it is probably the best that we can do.
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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.
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.
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.
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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.
Finally, I think that RIPE 75 will be an unusual RIPE meeting in terms of the groups that attend due to the location (Dubai). Certainly we expect a lot more Muslims than usual, for example. I am not sure if that makes it more important or less important to collect diversity information though....
Cheers,
-- Shane