Re: [Eligibility-discuss] [Gendispatch] New Version Notification for draft-knodel-nomcom-gender-representation-00.txt

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

“The best” is subjective, so if a certain class of potential participants
is underrepresented, the subjective meaning that is chosen will not include
that group’s perception of what “the best” is.

Regarding demographics, my point is not that we should try to achieve
demographic parity in nomcom given the current selection pool, but rather
that the actual demographics are a reasonable basis for reasoning about
what to do, and it doesn’t make sense to water this down by considering
parity with the tech community as some kind of intermediate approximation.
There’s no need for an intermediate approximation.

If your concern is that I am suggesting nomcom should be 50% women right
now, you need not be concerned. I am merely pointing out that Mallory’s
proposal is really quite modest.

Op za 25 nov 2023 om 17:12 schreef Michael StJohns <[e-mail]>

> On 11/25/2023 4:33 PM, Ted Lemon wrote:
>
> Why would any demographic standard other than "the whole population" make
> sense?
>
> Small steps.  If we can get buy in from the IETF to make the IETF look
> more like the tech community, and if we can actually accomplish that, we
> can then try the next step building on success to try and make the IETF
> (and the tech community from which we draw people) look more like the whole
> world.    If we try to make the only and first goal to make the IETF look
> like the world, we will never succeed.  Or at least not as long as you or I
> live.
>
> I don't think anyone is proposing that we actually succeed, in the IETF,
> in achieving parity, but clearly we are so utterly removed from parity that
> some extra effort is reasonably called for to at least make space for there
> to be a consistent voice for the part of the population that is currently
> so far from parity.
>
> You and I define parity differently.  For this Nomcom and the next and the
> next, we're dealing with a pool size and composition of possible volunteers
> that's mostly already decided.  That pool will come no where close to
> parity with the population at large.  That is a fact.  I'm willing at least
> to try to get to parity with the current tech community, or even to a 5
> year projection of the changes to that community.  It has the benefit of
> being a supportable argument, and mostly not annoying the rest of the folk
> who are seeing their chances to participate diminish (e.g. it is somewhat a
> zero-sum game).
>
> We make genuine (although I would say incomplete, since we never go to
> Africa) efforts for regional parity, so why not do the same for gender
> parity?
>
> Actually - with respect to the Nomcom we do not.  With the sole exception
> of the max 2 per org rule, the Nomcom runs on randomness.  With respect to
> the actual selection of leadership - I would argue that we've told the
> Nomcom to pick the best people, not "and make sure we have one from X and
> one from Y".
>
> If you mean actual physical meetings - well sort of.   There are whole
> swaths of the world we avoid - and for good reason.  Not all of us agree on
> all reasons.  That's a whole other problem and one for a distinctly
> different mailing list.
>
> I participated in the first ICANN Nomcom and regional diversity WAS a
> criteria.  And there was a great deal of horse trading done to accomplish
> that.  But the selection of that Nomcom was targeted rather than random and
> members generally represented communities.  It was a different, but valid,
> way of doing things and led to not a little amount of cognitive dissonance
> on my part.   As of 2023 it was also much larger than ours so targeting
> made a bit more sense.
>
> I hesitate to try and pigeon-hole IETF participants in buckets for the
> purpose of selecting Nomcom members or for the selection of group
> membership over technical competence.
>
> Later, Mike
>
> On Sat, Nov 25, 2023 at 2:33 PM Michael StJohns <[e-mail]>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Ted - thanks for the thoughtful note.  Comments.
>>
>> On 11/25/2023 1:11 PM, Ted Lemon wrote:
>>
>> I feel like the problem that you aren't representing here that I think is
>> quite important, Mike, is that most of us live in societies that clearly
>> bias in favor of men being in positions that allow them to travel to the
>> IETF. And I think we've seen that the IETF is also a fairly unwelcoming
>> environment for people who are not willing to handle disrespect by
>> responding in kind. (In cast it's not clear, I DO NOT mean you here—I'm
>> just saying this about the social structure we dwell in generally).
>>
>> Agreed. And there are non-societal structural issues we've started to
>> address - e.g. provision of child care that should start to help.
>>
>> (Let me address "non-male community" - Mallory's document uses the term
>> gender and that's got a number of 2020era edges and hooks that don't
>> exactly match to a simple binary choice between male and female.  "non-male
>> community/class/?" was the best I could get to trying to identify the class
>> of have-nots in this discussion. Community may have been a bad choice.
>> Offense if any was given was not intended.).
>>
>>
>> And women are generally, in our societies, socialized to accept
>> disrespect without responding in kind. They are generally seen in a poorer
>> light than men if they do respond in kind. They generally experience
>> negative consequences most men are not familiar with if they respond in
>> kind. Indeed, they also often experience these consequences merely by
>> disagreeing, even when they do so politely and constructively.
>>
>> I believe you're correct that the literature says that.  The question is
>> how do we - the IETF - mitigate this characteristic of conditioning?
>>
>>
>>
>> As a result of this, it is pretty much inevitable, particularly to the
>> extent that we measure IETF participation on the basis of who shows up and
>> who talks the most on mailing lists, that women are going to be
>> underrepresented in the IETF, and consequently on nomcom.
>>
>> Underrepresented based on whole population?  Based on equivalent
>> populations in the tech world? Based on membership on the mailing lists?
>> Based on WG chairs?
>>
>> Based on whole population, pretty much every tech community  has women
>> substantially under-represented.  And mostly not something the IETF can
>> directly address.
>>
>> On a SWAG basis I'd guess women  already in the tech world are only
>> moderately under-represented in the IETF.  I don't know the answer for
>> mailing lists, and I once did the math for WG chairs and our leadership was
>> actually overrepresented based on the proportion of women WG chairs at that
>> time.
>>
>> I started through the volunteer list for the current Nomcom and gave up
>> trying to gender the entries by name.  Some are people I know, some I
>> guessed based on the organizational/national  association, but after
>> Linkedin dinged me for looking up a number of the non-european derived
>> names in quick order, I gave up.
>>
>> What I would like to know is whether the proportion of women volunteers
>> vs eligible women is similar to the overall proportion vs eligible.  There
>> were 254 volunteers this year - I seem to remember that worked out to be
>> about 10% of the eligible pool.
>>
>>
>> For what it's worth, I don't really like the notion of a "non-male
>> community." I feel like this draws a line that doesn't exist. Women are
>> members of our community: they are just treated differently, and because of
>> that fewer of them participate in ways that make them eligible for nomcom.
>>
>> Attend 3/5 meetings either in person or virtually is all that is needed
>> to become eligible.  Do we want people on the Nomcom without that minimum
>> requirement?  Mallory's document does not suggest that and I wouldn't
>> support it.
>>
>>
>> So the question is not how we address the needs of the "non-male
>> community," but how we do a better job of including those members of our
>> community who are not currently being fairly and effectively included.
>>
>> I don't actually know how to do that. I'm not convinced that Mallory's
>> proposal is the best approach. However, I don't have a better suggestion,
>> and none of the suggestions you've offered feel to me like they are better
>> suggestions.
>>
>> I keep asking the question and no one says more than "it couldn't hurt" -
>> does Mallory's proposal fix a problem other than the math occasionally
>> omitting a woman from the Nomcom?   Does having a guaranteed member of the
>> Nomcom lead to more women being selected to IETF leadership?
>>
>>
>> In an ideal world, I would much rather make the changes that we need to
>> make so that we have appropriate proportional representation of women and
>> men in our community, which I think is roughly 51-49 based on my limited
>> demographic knowledge.
>>
>> And you would be wrong.  To the extent that googling gives you anything,
>> take a look at  https://www.luisazhou.com/blog/women-in-tech-statistics/
>> It's roughly 3:1 men to women - so about 25%.
>>
>> The rest of the document matches my limited understanding of the overall
>> tech women problem.
>>
>> I think the fact that we could implement Mallory's proposal now is
>> actually evidence that we've made some progress in that direction. But this
>> feels very much like a chicken-and-egg problem. I don't know how to get men
>> in our community to be more respectful and welcoming of women. Even if we
>> were (and I think the majority of us are!), I don't know what we can do
>> about the problem of representation that isn't directly our fault, but is
>> simply the emergent property of our societies' biases, over which we have
>> very limited agency.
>>
>> So having said that, it feels to me like what Mallory has proposed is
>> something that's actually within our power, and does address a real
>> problem. And so maybe until we can identify an approach that we can agree
>> is better, this proposal is a reasonable place to start.
>>
>> And I'm still disagreeing with "address(es) a real problem".    This is
>> an artifact of how we do things nothing more.  The problem is actually
>> disproportional representation in the leadership if any.
>>
>>
>> Let me suggest a more radical approach that is evidence based and not
>> triggered by the math and the volunteer pool or a weak statement of a
>> problem:
>>
>> 1) Resolved: The Nomcom voting membership should reflect the tech
>> industry population, not just the IETF's current population.
>>
>> 2) The selection algorithm for the Nomcom shall select 2 women for the
>> first two slots of the Nomcom.   The number of women shall be capped at 3.
>> In other words, each Nomcom  will have either 20% or 30% of the voting
>> members as women.  Selection for the first two slots shall only be done
>> from volunteers who self-identify for inclusion.
>>
>> 3) The remaining selections for the Nomcom shall be from the entire pool
>> of volunteers discarding any that would violate a cap restriction.
>>
>> 4) If the volunteer pool for women falls below 10% of the pool or below
>> 10 women, the guarantee drops to 1.  If the pool contains  <= 10 women then
>> in addition, the cap drops to 2.
>>
>> 5) The numbers in section 2 shall be readdressed by the IETF community
>> every 8 years and shall be adjusted based on the population of women in
>> technology irrespective of the IETF'c current participation to give
>> guaranteed proportional representation.
>>
>> 6) Volunteers must self-identify to qualify for selection under 2.  This
>> self-identification is not subject to challenge.
>>
>>
>> I don't actually know if that will effect the output of the Nomcom, but
>> hope springs eternal.
>>
>> Mike
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Nov 25, 2023 at 12:42 PM Michael StJohns <[e-mail]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I'm going to reset this slightly and offer a heretical comment.
>>>
>>> The lack of a particular community participating on a given nomcom is
>>> NOT a problem, well-known or otherwise.  It's one fact from a fair random
>>> selection.
>>>
>>> Instead, "The Nomcom candidate selections under-represent a given
>>> community over many Nomcoms."  would be a problem if the statistics showed
>>> that.  Is that the actual problem we should be addressing?
>>>
>>> Is the following a more accurate statement of the perceived problem?
>>>
>>> If Mallory's document said "We have this problem of under-representation
>>> in the IETF leadership.  Under-representation in the proposed candidates is
>>> measurably increased in the years where the voting members of the Nomcom do
>>> not include a member from that community and here's the statistics to show
>>> that case.  If we imposed a requirement to require at least one of those
>>> community members on each Nomcom statistics show this would help to resolve
>>> the under-representation of that community within the output selections."
>>> I would probably be more accepting of Mallory's proposed solution in that
>>> case.
>>>
>>> Unfortunately the current document doesn't say that, and I can't
>>> actually figure out what the problem being addressed actually is.  It can't
>>> be that losing a lottery is the actual problem.
>>>
>>> I might still argue against the simplistic approach proposed to solving
>>> the under-representation problem.  I would suggest that instead the
>>> liaison/advisor approach coupled with greater oversight by the confirming
>>> bodies and a willingness by them to require the Nomcom to reconsider
>>> selections as a means of achieving appropriate levels of representation
>>> might address an under-representation problem.
>>>
>>> We address the input conditions to affect the output conditions.  If
>>> adjusting the input condition results in no difference to the output
>>> conditions, why are we twiddling?  If adjusting the input conditions does
>>> affect the output - show me the math.
>>>
>>> A few other questions before I end - related to the proposal on the
>>> table and that will need to be addressed without hand waving:
>>>
>>> 1) Does the mandatory requirement apply if the volunteer pool
>>> participation for a community falls below 10%?  5%?  3%?  Or goes above
>>> 20%? 30%?
>>>
>>> 2) What is the criteria for selecting other communities for similar
>>> treatment?
>>>
>>> 3) Are claims of community membership subject to challenge (similar to
>>> claims of organizational association)?
>>>
>>> 4) What happens if the sole selected community member needs to be
>>> replaced?  Consider both the before the Nomcom convenes and after?
>>>
>>> 5) Is there a sunset clause?  If so, how is it triggered?  If not, why
>>> not?
>>>
>>> Lastly - the more general algorithm that would probably work without
>>> collapse is to select the special community members at the beginning of the
>>> process applying all of the rest of the rules for the remaining batch of
>>> selections.
>>>
>>> And to capture the possibilities:
>>>
>>> Possible changes to the Nomcom process (zero or more of these):
>>>
>>> 1) Impose a requirement to select at least one member from the non-male
>>> community to serve on the Nomcom.
>>>
>>> 1a) .... at least 2 members...  [[generally to address a past issue
>>> which has resulted in knock on present issues, you over represent the
>>> affected community for a period of time]]
>>>
>>> 2) Increase the number of voting members from 10 to 15 or 16.  At 16,
>>> with 10% of the pool, a community has a 4 in 5 chance of at least 1 member,
>>> a 1 in 2 chance of at least 2.
>>>
>>> 3) Provide a non-male liaison/advisor either for every Nomcom or for any
>>> Nomcom without a non-male voting member.
>>>
>>> 4) Have a mandatory 1/2 briefing for the Nomcom on diversity issues
>>> prior to their first deliberation?
>>>
>>> Later, Mike
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Eligibility-discuss mailing list
>>> [e-mail]
>>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/eligibility-discuss
>>>
>>
>>
>