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

["Rob Wilton (rwilton)" <[e-mail]>]

To the dispatch question:

I think that that this is problem worthy further consideration but think that there are still issues and problems to discuss and resolve.  Hence, I would propose a short-lived WG to take this on with a potential acceptable outcome (i.e., not failure) that no change should be made (e.g., due to privacy/disclosure considerations).

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gendispatch <[e-mail]> On Behalf Of Brian E
> Carpenter
> Sent: Saturday, November 25, 2023 2:55 AM
> To: Christian Huitema <[e-mail]>; Mallory Knodel
> <[e-mail]>; Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]>
> Cc: [e-mail]
> Subject: Re: [Gendispatch] New Version Notification for draft-knodel-
> nomcom-gender-representation-00.txt
> 
> >
> > Maybe I am too sensitive. But I don' have a good feeling there.
> 
> You are correct that NomCom volunteers would need to (a) state their
> gender identity and (b) agree to it being used in the nomcom selection
> process.


> And if that process is to remain subject to public verification,
> as today, they must (c) agree to it being made public.
[Rob Wilton (rwilton)] 
I think that this is correct.  If public verification is important then people who want to potentially be selected as part of the non-dominant gender need to be willing to have information potentially publicly disclosed.  But I think that we could take some steps to minimize the amount of information that needs to be disclosed:

(1) Collect the information specifically for Nomcom and delete it once the Nomcom committee has been seated (can be re-gathered if needed).
(2) Group the categories together to a choice of just two:
  a) Cat 1: "PNTS/Male" (default).
  b) Cat 2: "Female/Non-binary/Other"
(3) Only publicly disclose the information if a candidate was selected due to (b).  Obviously, this also implicitly exposes the gender answer for all candidates that would have been selected except for this axis.

> 
> That may be enough to kill the proposal. At the very least, it makes
> "prefer not to say" a necessary option.
[Rob Wilton (rwilton)] 
Perhaps combining it with male and making it the default option helps?

An alternative choice is to ditch public independent verification, and perhaps instead have 1 or 2 chosen people (maybe perhaps someone from the Secretariat and ISOC chair) who validate that the Nomcom chair has performed the selection correctly.  I.e., they are also provided temporary access to gender declaration but are obliged not to disclose, they only verify the Nomcom chair's selection.  I make no comment as to whether this is a good idea, or a cost worth paying, just stating as another potential option.

Regards,
Rob