Re: Diversity of candidates was Re: NomCom 2020 Announcement of Selections

[Michael StJohns <[e-mail]>]

On 1/25/2021 5:08 PM, Salz, Rich wrote:
>>     Rich - when compared to the general set of IETF participants, the Nomcom
>      selections mostly mirror the distribution within that set. When compared
>      to the general set of adults (or for that matter, the general set of
>      adults in the tech space) they don't, and that's been a complaint for at
>      least the last 15 years or so.
>
> Not having metrics, I am not so sure this is true.  I look at the systers list and group photos that are shown at every newcomer's presentation, for example.
>
>>     And one of the axes - from my POV - is small vs large organizations.
> I completely agree.
>
> One idea about addressing this is that we change the AD job to not be so full-time.  Or add more AD's.  Lots of choices here.  Terry Manderson's email, https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/S4xr9MR3usleQ8nCMTACnJ6UWkU/, is inspiring.
>    
>   
>
>
Hi Rich - I actually did the math a long while back (maybe 8 years?), 
and at one time the leadership was about 15% over-represented by women 
based on a rough population analysis of the apparent proportion of 
genders (by name) for both the attendee list and the list of WG chairs - 
e.g. my best guess at the IETF demographics.

Given that the general set of adults is about 1/2 female, and given that 
the set of female attendees appears to be about 10-20% of the IETF set 
of attendees, I would have actually thought the statement "Nomcom 
selections .... when compared to the general set of adults ... don't 
[mirror the distribution within that set]" would be self-evidently true.

Mike