Concerning Martin’s decision to not stand again for Council: While I do admire this step I do not think it will significantly raise the chances for a woman to be elected. Only because there will be one less man standing; that more women are standing because we've given them a prod by nominating them will have that effect any way. I believe Martin to be a better contributor to TEI Council than myself and if he would agree to stand I'd be willing to not stand in exchange to salve his conscience. (Though I know he may have other travel-related reasons for not wanting to stand.)
I don't believe I'm in any way a better contributor than James, of course; he knows far more about the TEI than I do, and has many more years of experience. But that's not really the point. The gender issue is the main reason I'm not standing, and there are two aspects to it: - If we have a slate which has fewer men and more women, we'll have a much better chance of having more women elected. That's especially the case if men who are more experienced step back, because they would otherwise presumably attract significant proportions of the vote. - I no longer feel comfortable serving on a Council which is so unbalanced. That's of course no reflection on any individual Council members, present or past; you all know how much I enjoy Council work and in particular the face-to-face meetings. But I'm now so uncomfortable with the situation that I have to do something. Deb Verhoeven's speech at DH 2015 had a powerful effect on me: https://soundcloud.com/deb-verhoeven/sets/digital-humanities-2015 It's really about the inertia of entrenched seniority, and the fact that only positive action -- not quotas or rules but people voluntarily vacating their positions because they see that the present situation is unacceptable -- is going to work. I'm not suggesting or recommending that anyone else do it, and I've had feedback both positive and negative from both men and women. But I can't think of anything else to do at this point. Cheers, Martin On 15-08-06 10:28 AM, James Cummings wrote:
On 06/08/15 15:39, Peter Stadler wrote:
I’m more concerned with the political issue of gender balance. That’s an issue with most software projects and most of the DH community[1].
Since this is a public list, I'd like to defend certain segments of the DH community here. Some try really quite hard to work on gender (and other) balances wherever feasible. With my DHOxSS hat on I'd point out that we provide a safe space for training, regardless of gender, but have a turn out of about 70% female. We do try hard in this area (e.g. 8 out 13 people on our Organisational Committee are female, we try for balance in speakers, etc.). But I have no idea if that really has an effect or not. Our stats are generally mimicked to some degree in other DH training events. Where it isn't represented is in the authors/presenters at DH conferences (as you know from linking to ScottW's work in this area). Anecdotally I'm told that "Women do training, and Men present at conferences" with explanations for this usually pointing out that it is the PIs of projects that do the presenting, while the more junior members of projects often undertake the training. This is then perhaps more of a reflection of the academic community as a whole where statistically those PIs are still mostly men and those junior members most women. I don't think we (the TEI Technical Council) can really change this except by leading by example and encouraging lots of good female (and other marginalised groups) to stand where they have skills and time to give to the TEI Consortium.
I do not know how to solve this, but projects that come to mind are e.g. „Rails girls“[2]. As a form of outreach that is good. For my own part, in addition to standing again myself to help with such mentoring if the community wishes, I've (openly to them) nominated a total of 14 women for board or council. I know that *some* of them have accepted and so we should have a nice healthy slate. (I hope this isn't counter-productive in dividing the vote somehow.) I should stress, however, lest there be any misunderstanding: I have not nominated these people because they happen to be women, I've nominated people who I believe have technical or other skills that will benefit the TEI Consortium and who mostly haven't participated before. It really wasn't difficult to come up with a list of names to nominate and I've thought of about a dozen more (who I can nominate next year...) What I have done in compiling my list of people to nominate is merely to decide this year not to nominate all the men I know who also have things to give, since history tells us they are much more likely to self-nominate. I have also nominated Gabby Bodard even though I don't believe he will accept.
Maybe we should offer special TEI training sessions to women by female(?) tutors? There have been many training sessions by excellent tutors who happen to be female -- it seems strange to me to somehow limit the _studentship_ to only women, especially since the majority of people taking such training tend to be women already, as long as you are providing a safe space for that learning. (c.f. DHOxSS adoption of the ADHO Code of Conduct as part of the ADHO Training Network... while we haven't really needed it, it advertises that we intend the summer school to be such a safe space for academic discourse and learning.)
The gap isn't in having women trained in TEI (I know lots!), it is having them be that much more interested in it that they have any desire to learn more about hand writing ODDs, our build process, etc. and their willingness to self-nominate compared to men. So I've nominated loads and the response from most of them has been to thank me for thinking that they are so technically competent and how honoured they are that I have nominated them. This is, of course, ridiculous because any of the women I nominated are perfectly reasonable candidates for Council. They are technically savvy and in some cases moreso than me, and so if they had the least bit desire to run for Council they *should* have been self-nominating. But some people feel a stigma is attached to that in some way (I clearly don't since I don't believe anyone has nominated me in the last decade other than myself).
Concerning Martin’s decision to not stand again for Council: While I do admire this step I do not think it will significantly raise the chances for a woman to be elected. Only because there will be one less man standing; that more women are standing because we've given them a prod by nominating them will have that effect any way. I believe Martin to be a better contributor to TEI Council than myself and if he would agree to stand I'd be willing to not stand in exchange to salve his conscience. (Though I know he may have other travel-related reasons for not wanting to stand.)
Hence, if there’s a real political will to change this, we’d need a quota. Yet, I’ve always seen the Council as a technical work group, not a political body. But it’s true we can and must do more for the dissemination of the required skills — but I’m not really sure how to achieve this?! I'm against the idea of quotas in any form, medium, or infrastructure. (I don't want to have a bandwidth quota, or an email quota either, and don't want a quota for any particular group on Council.) It is about social change not political change. If there is political will to help to enact that social change, then great. All I want is for the TEI Technical Council to be filled with people who do good work in furthering the maintenance and development of the Guidelines and related software, as well as related activities. I want the community to take on even more education, outreach, and production of materials which make is simple for users to start using the TEI. I don't really _care_ about the gender of the individuals who do that, except in that I want it to be reflective of the community and don't want anyone to feel they can't participate. Indeed, like the rest of you I suspect, I want *more* people to participate, at all levels and abilities. In a community like TEI the more people participating the better.
Sorry for such a long answer.
-James