[OpenStack Foundation] [Diversity] re: Diversity Workgroup APAC 2015-08-27

Barrett, Carol L carol.l.barrett at intel.com
Wed Sep 2 14:43:27 UTC 2015


After reading a related email on the Women of OpenStack ML, I wonder if we want to include something to gauge the challenges the OpenStack tools pose to potential participants – specifically IRC and Gerrit. Thoughts?

From: Anne Gentle [mailto:annegentle at justwriteclick.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 02, 2015 6:31 AM
To: Roland Chan
Cc: foundation at lists.openstack.org; Stefano Maffulli
Subject: Re: [OpenStack Foundation] [Diversity] re: Diversity Workgroup APAC 2015-08-27



On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 1:12 AM, Roland Chan <roland at aptira.com<mailto:roland at aptira.com>> wrote:
I've added all the categories identified in the 3 phases that were previously agreed, and altered the questions somewhat. There are now 10 questions. I'm not keen to try to add any supplementary questions.

Where I think we need to move beyond binary or simple data (country, age), I have stayed with free text entry.

I haven't yet written any introductory blurb about privacy protection, the optional nature of the survey all the questions.

Similarly, I haven't yet addressed any issues around how the survey should be targeted. I'm leaning towards a surveying a subset of the population, and trying to provide an incentive to participate (don't ask, haven't got one yet), so as to reduce self-selection bias. Anyone with professional knowledge in this area please speak up.

I'm unlikely to make the next meeting, so I'm afraid I can only discuss via email. We're running a little behind the original schedule, but I hope to be able to engage the Foundation to commence the process of executing the survey by the end of next week.

One area I always wonder about is English as a second language, does it hamper efforts to get engaged in the community? I suspect so and would like to find solutions for further inclusion.

Can that be added if the goal of the survey is to identify areas where underrepresented people may be struggling?

Also, just to comment on the survey sampling, we got less than 30 responses to our Women of OpenStack survey, so keep it in mind that we may not get meaningful data that you can act upon. We may need to dig into the Foundation data and enhance those profiles instead, if the goal is "find ways to reach underrepresented groups."
Thanks,
Anne


Cheers,

Roland

On Wed, 2 Sep 2015 at 11:42 Johnston, Tamara <Tamara.Johnston at emc.com<mailto:Tamara.Johnston at emc.com>> wrote:
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<tel: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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--
Anne Gentle
Rackspace
Principal Engineer
www.justwriteclick.com<http://www.justwriteclick.com>
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