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Re: Diversity of IETF Leadership

2013-03-20 09:58:06
Going a bit over-the-top: is there an interaction between sex and sexual 
orientation? Can one count as the other?

On Mar 20, 2013, at 8:10 AM, Riccardo Bernardini 
<framefritti(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:



On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 11:53 AM, Margaret Wasserman 
<mrw(_at_)lilacglade(_dot_)org> wrote:

Hi Stewart,

On Mar 20, 2013, at 2:04 AM, Stewart Bryant <stbryant(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com> 
wrote:
Age
Disability
Gender reassignment
Marriage and civil partnership
Pregnancy and maternity
Race
Religion and belief
Sex
Sexual orientation

The U.S. has a similar (although not identical) list, and it may vary a bit 
state-by-state.

If we are going to have an itemized list of diversity characteristics, we 
should not pick and choose, we should include the full list.

While I certainly wouldn't suggest we start discriminating based on _any_ of 
these factors, it is very difficult to measure our results in some of these 
areas, as we do not collect this information from IETF attendees, nor do we 
publish the age, disability status, gender status, marital status, religion 
or sexual orientation of our I* members. 

I am not suggesting that we start collecting or publishing this information, 
just saying that it makes it hard to tell whether our leadership is 
reasonably representative of the community in some of these areas.


I would say that in this case we are almost surely automatically fair:  while 
one can suspect that gender or geographical origin could add a bias (even an 
unwanted one), if I do not know the, say, sexual orientation of a candidate, 
I cannot discriminate (even on a subconscious level) using that information.
 
Also, I think there are some area where diversity is important to the IETF 
that are not on this list, like geographic location, corporate affiliation 
and industry segment (vendor, operator, researcher, etc.).

Margaret