I'm writing to follow up on the Lightning Talk analysing the sex of
participants at RIPE meetings, and in particular the call for ideas for
actions for the Programme Committee to take to "improve" the
distribution (by which the speaker meant, to increase female participation).
First, I will say that I was heartened that the speaker's analysis
showed that participation at RIPE broadly matches the industry from
which it is drawn. I would have been very disappointed if the
predominantly male participation had acted to discourage women in our
industry from attending RIPE meetings, and I am happy to see that there
is no evidence of that.
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 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
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