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Article author here. Thanks for the feedback. I perhaps didn't word that paragraph as well as I could -- my point there wasn't to introduce quotas, but to atte
by mattpointblank 14y ago
Article author here. Thanks for the feedback.
I perhaps didn't word that paragraph as well as I could -- my point there wasn't to introduce quotas, but to attempt to nip the problem in the bud. If I'd been organising EdgeConf, and had got to ~80% of my speakers being male with no female representation, I would've dropped everything and made sure that the rest were women. I guess when you include the numbers then this feels like tokenism, but it was mostly arbitrary. My point here was that they should have realised they had a problem before it reached 100%, not start out with the intention to recruit x% women (no matter how relevant or qualified they were) -- that's tokenism, right?
- natrius 14y agoChoosing people primarily because they add diversity is tokenism. There are processes that are effective in obtaining underrepresented speakers that are effective and don't require choosing people because they're a minority. We should use those. I really don't think we should label conferences failures because they do a poor job on the diversity front. Instead, we should encourage them to do a better job next time and show them how.