On Thu, 28 Mar 2019 at 14:35, Jim Jagielski <j...@jagunet.com> wrote:
> So what are you proposing? What actionable corrections can we make > that don't turn the concept of "it doesn't matter who you are, it is what > you > do that counts" on its ear? > this thread, if you go back to the start of it, was my attempt to start that conversation. I have repeatedly given suggestions (both on this thread, and on other threads) for things we could do > If we are actively (or passively) discouraging diversity, then it is > a problem, of course. Are we? > yes. of course we are. ~5% of our committer base are women. 1 single person, that we know of, is Black. compare these to the figures for the industry as a whole and there is literally no other conclusion you can come to The issue, for me at least, is that there are expectations that > if somehow some sub-population does not totally match the variations > and diversity in the overall human population that diversity is > being discouraged, I'm not even comparing us to the population as a whole. I'm comparing us the averages for the tech industry in North America. which by most estimates (e.g. looking at the demographic data of undergraduate degree graduates) put the figure for women in tech at ~20% can you explain to me where that other 15% of women are? why do we not count them amongst our committers? The whole idea of meritocracy is to avoid all that, to avoid even > the possibility of "gaming the system" by having clear, well-defined, > well-followed and, most importantly of all, non-discriminatory definitions > of merit. and again, according to actual studies done, not wishful thinking, it fails at doing that > With that in mind, what can and should we do to address > that? > again. I have made a number of suggestions for starting points in this very thread. and have not gone into more detail, because frankly I am exhausted trying to get people to even acknowledge *we have a problem* -- something that is exemplified by your not-so-subtle hand-wringing about "teh social justice warriors" in your last email (if you're looking for reasons women might not want to contribute to Apache, perhaps this serves as one example...) I want everyone and anyone who wishes to contribute to Apache to > be able to do so, be warmly welcomed, and be acknowledged and rewarded > for their actions and contributions. I think we are all in agreement > here. > then why do you dismiss criticism of the systems we've put in place to supposedly work towards those goals? criticism that is sorely needed Mark wrote: > How about this. Lets use some of the $ we have in the bank to get some > good advice (and potentially ongoing support) from domain experts on > what we could do to improve. good idea. the few people inside our org who we *should* be listening to on such topics are ignored/aggressed/flamed into silence and it shouldn't be on them to fix this stuff either Eric wrote: > That's under-representation against the global population and not > against the pool of contributors. no, it's (SIGNIFICANT) under-representation against the population of software engineering graduates in north america (to use one baseline for comparison)
