[Bigbang-dev] Gender diversity and draft productivity

[Juliana Guerra]

Thanks Sebastian for opening this conversation. Let me say that this is
something of very much interest for me but I'm now trying to figure out
how to manage this tool (considering I'm not a data scientist :( ).

> I've managed to make some progress on the question of how gender diversity
> affects working group productivity.

I think your question must be "how gender affects a wg productivity", as
the 'gender tendency' you are using is in no way the same as 'gender
diversity'

>  - The data is not always clean, and e.g. unicode errors in somebody's name
> cause them to be identified as non-binary.

'non-binary' is, if such, a self determined gender option, not related
to this "unknown" (.5) output

>  - I get confused by this all the time, but I was under the impression that
> "male" and "female" were sexes, not genders?

>From a biological perspective the terms "male" and "female" are referred
to sex. But that has nothing to do with names and gender identities.

>  - The name-based gender detector has a western bias and this leads to some
> errors. I believe it is misgendering Gurshabad Grover as a woman.

Completeley agree, and I absolutely think the name-based detector shows
more about western bias than gender

> Is anybody on this list authoritative about the right kinds of gender
> categories to use?

Not authoritative but I think in this context is ok to use "man" and
"woman" as gender categories. There are other spaces where the
"preferred gender pronoun" is something considered, and (in English
speaking contexts) you can find at least "He", "She" and "They" (for
queers and queer inclusive people). But I think it's quite important to
avoid the 'tendency' which clearly confuses and can also look offensive
in terms of gender inclusion.

> One idea is to use the IETF DataTracker's biography field and count
> pronouns:
> https://github.com/datactive/bigbang/issues/393

I think that's a good idea. Maybe there are some biographies written in
first person or not necessarily using pronouns, but they should not be
so much. Maybe you can include "they" as an option and look what
happens. And so you will not get a tendency but four different options.

1. He, his, man
2. She, her, woman

And in very less frequency
3. They, their, them
4. N/A

I remember in old drafts some chinese authors from a "Women's
University", that's why I think including the term can be useful.

Sorry if I'm saying any absurd thing, as I said I don't know about data
analysis, I'm just really interested in gender issues inside IETF

> I'll step forward and say my view of this, which is: in no way, shape, or
> form are we doing some sort of fundamental injustice or wrong by having an
> imperfect solution to what is an inherently challenging engineering
> problem. I'm not interested in moralizing on this topic. I would very much
> like to improve the accuracy of the results such that this is possible and
> over some minimum ethical hurdles.

Actually I was wondering how could you identify gender in mailing lists
and I think the current is a wrong approach. I think what you propose
here is a good place to start. But from my point of view, gender is much
more than an inherently challenging engineering problem. Very happy to
discuss more.

Regards!

Juliana

> - S
> 
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