[diversity] Options for gender on meeting registration

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.

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.

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!)

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
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digitale handtekening
URL: </ripe/mail/archives/diversity/attachments/20170602/582ba683/attachment.sig>