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

[Michael StJohns <[e-mail]>]

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
>
>
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