Re: Diversity of IETF Leadership

At 1:08 AM -0400 3/12/13, Margaret Wasserman wrote:

> On Mar 11, 2013, at 6:54 PM, Dan Harkins
> <dharkins(_at_)lounge(_dot_)org>
> wrote:
> >  In other words, the statement that
> > gender and racial diversity in
> > groups makes them "smarter" has no basis in fact. Do you
> > feel that
> > an all-female group is stupider than a similarly sized group that
> > is
> > equal parts male and female? Really?
>
> Actually, Dan, there are well-regarded
> academic studies that show that groups that contain women are smarter
> than all-male groups, regardless of the relative intelligence of the
> group members.  Surprising, perhaps, but true.  Here is a
> pointer to a discussion of one of them:
>
> http://www.antonioyon.com/group-intelligence-and-the-female-factor

When I started reading that I thought that it was counter-intuitive that having smarter people in the group doesn't make it smarter, but having more women (regardless of individual intelligence) does.  Reading further, I see that the apparent counter-intuitiveness was really a difference in the meaning of "smarter" as applied to groups.  The link seems to be only to an abstract, so I don't know if an all-female group would be smarter than, say, one that was 75% female or 95% female.

The abstract did discuss specific attributes that females seemed to bring to groups that resulted in the smarter outcomes (body language differences, more openness, more effort to draw out unpopular opinions, fostering greater trust).  I suppose there must be studies looking to see if people (including males) can be specifically trained to do better in these areas.  I wonder if the linkage between these traits and women is equally valid for engineering disciplines, given the widely accepted stereotype of engineering types rating low in these areas?  I wonder if some training along these lines might be good for WG chairs and ADs?

-- 

Randall Gellens
Opinions are personal;    facts are suspect;    I speak for myself only
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