Going a bit over-the-top: is there an interaction between sex and sexual orientation? Can one count as the other?
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 11:53 AM, Margaret Wasserman <mrw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Stewart,
On Mar 20, 2013, at 2:04 AM, Stewart Bryant < stbryant@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Age
> Disability
> Gender reassignment
> Marriage and civil partnership
> Pregnancy and maternity
> Race
> Religion and belief
> Sex
> Sexual orientation
>
> 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
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