Re: IETF Diversity Question on Berlin Registration?

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Damn. Breaking my two message rule.

On 4/18/13 4:47 PM, Dan Harkins wrote:

   Now we're playing a subtle word game here. A bias that a statistician
might add is demonstrably different than what Melinda Shore has
_repeatedly_ referred to as "gender bias". So when I'm talking about
bias I'm talking about a form of discrimination based on gender. It is
the intentional passing over of a more qualified woman in favor of a
less qualified man.

It's so nice when the straw men stand up and say, "Here I am! Look at me!"

"Intentional passing over"? "Intentional"???

I defy you to find anywhere in Melinda's messages.... Strike that: I defy you to find anywhere in *anybody's* messages on this topic where it says that the problem suspected is *intentional* gender bias.

Overt intentional sexists and other such bigots are never a problem of this sort; they're sincere in their beliefs easy to identify. Finding and eliminating their sort of bias is a walk in the park. It's the *unintentional* and *institutional* and *structural* biases that are the ones that creep in all over the place and are the least detectable.

If you think that all of this discussion is about intentional bias, you have been talking to yourself.

   A statistician might put bias in his statistical result and a survey
designer might put bias in a question to elicit a favored result,
intentionally or unintentionally. But we both know that is not what
we're talking about here.

Nonsense. That is exactly what we are talking about, whether it's how we ADs choose chairs, or how chairs choose document editors, or how we all choose nominees for the IESG or IAB, etc. If any of us thought we were talking about intentional bias, we would have packed up and gone home long ago.

   "We" are a volunteer standards organization that operates on a
consensus basis. For the purposes of "who we are" the number of
women that register for a meeting should be as relevant as the number
of people who register that are left handed, flat footed or double jointed
(for the record I am all three). In other words, not at all.

All of those features *should* be equally relevant (i.e., not at all). And if you could design an interesting addition to the Harvard Implicit Association Test <https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/> that showed whether people are or aren't unconsciously biased when it comes to left-handedness or flat-footedness or hypermobility (I hate that other term), I'm sure the Harvard folks would love to hear from you. But there *is* loads of nice evidence about unconscious bias when it comes to gender, especially when it comes to leadership roles and roles in engineering. I suspect (but until you design that test, can't provide evidence) that we *do* ignore (even subconsciously) left-handedness and flat-footedness and hypermobility when it comes to leadership positions in the IETF. But I also suspect that we are subconsciously influenced when it comes to gender bias; indeed, given what I know of the literature, it would be hard to imagine that we in the IETF are the astounding exception. So I think it's worth examining, especially given some of the interesting perceptual anecdotes seen already.

So, do we need to start this entire conversation over, overtly stating that we are not interested in looking at *intentional* gender (or corporate affiliation or other sorts of) bias?

pr

--
Pete Resnick<http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - +1 (858)651-4478





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