Open Stack

The Diversity WG is actively working on many things, including moving forward with our Data Diversity Plan that includes analyzing what, where and how we’re currently collecting this information, determining where to store this information, defining how to enable the core team to analyze and report on this data, so on and so forth.

I support the stance the Foundation has taken in the past, which was to provide an open text field (and/or option to select “prefer not to say”) that enables a community member to, if they so choose, share their identity.  While we’re trying to better understand the makeup of our community we cannot limit the options they can choose from or ask what will likely be perceived as personal questions (do you identify as a gender minority).  We can either choose to use an open text field / prefer not to say approach or take the hybrid approach that Facebook has taken where they list 50+ identities but still have an open text field.  I suggest we stick with what the Foundation has been doing, as this will enable our community members to decide if they want to share their sexual identity and they’re not boxed into choosing X, Y, or Z.

Regards,

Tamara Johnston  |  Cloud Portfolio  |  EMC Global Services  |  (C) 1-510-398-9114  |  (E) tamara.johnston at emc.com<mailto:tamara.johnston at emc.com>


From: Roland Chan <roland at aptira.com<mailto:roland at aptira.com>>
Date: Tuesday, September 1, 2015 at 5:15 PM
To: Stefano Maffulli <stefano at openstack.org<mailto:stefano at openstack.org>>, "foundation at lists.openstack.org<mailto:foundation at lists.openstack.org>" <foundation at lists.openstack.org<mailto:foundation at lists.openstack.org>>
Subject: Re: [OpenStack Foundation] [Diversity] re: Diversity Workgroup APAC 2015-08-27

The existing data is being handled by another sub-team on the Diversity WG. I'm certainly keen to see it, but getting it isn't my focus.

Regarding the opt-out capability, my intent is that every question is optional. The survey itself will require a one page intro where we address this and other privacy related issues.

Roland

On Wed, 2 Sep 2015 at 02:39 Stefano Maffulli <stefano at openstack.org<mailto:stefano at openstack.org>> wrote:
On 09/01/2015 08:53 AM, Amy Marrich wrote:
> I had sent this to a smaller section of the group but it deals with how
> the University of California asks the gender question and also includes
> sexual orientation.
>
> http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/07/28/university-california-offers-six-choices-for-gender-identity/
>
> We may be able to get a hold of their survey as a possible guideline.

At the beginning of 2014[1], the OpenStack Foundations started asking
its members to specify their gender. The intention was to start
measuring that aspect of diversity in order to improve it. Since the
gender issue is extremely new to society, there are lots of acronyms and
constant fluxes of differences among the non-binary genders. We decided,
after long debate and research, to use an open text form to specify
gender because that's the most flexible one. Any other system we found,
including the one from UC above, had criticism because the debate even
among scholars is not set.

You may have noticed that the form to subscribe to the Summit for
example asks gender offering 4 options:

- male
- female
- let me tell you
   > open form

(I noticed now it's missing the very valuable 4th option "prefer not to
say", which I think may be useful to have even if the response is itself
optional)

Has anybody looked at the historic data about gender from the members
database?

/stef

[1] A summary of that conversation is on my blog
http://maffulli.net/2014/02/05/tracking-gender-diversity-in-the-openstack-developer-community/


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