EIght Squared Con: Blog post on Gender Parity

[major_clanger]

Over on Eight Squared's blog I've posted about our policy on Gender Parity for panels.

(Also linked to in our LJ community.)

Comments

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I'll be interested to see/hear about the tactics for dealing the A,B,C are good on panels problem as that cuts to the heart of the problem and will require a necessary but good change in the way things are handled in terms of building program participants.

I hope it doesn't turn into an Alison, Becka and Charlotte problem. With the same people turning up everywhere.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's because I'm an American, or an Old Geezer, or just plain Weird, but... ya know ... I think I'd be happier if ConComs (or their members) didn't Announce such policies, but would just ... go ahead and goddamn _do_ them. Oops! More precisely (because I'm not irked by you or your action here) I guess it's that I wish that Fandom were more like it was Back In The Good Old Days (i.e., when I was a Neo, c. 50 years ago). Back then, I think we ordinary fans mostly didn't _need_ to have ConCom-people do the Flagellation & Public Confession bit -- most of us had either run or helped to run Cons, knew that misteaks were inevitable, and wielded the whips ourselves... but only when the errors were repeated after they were obvious.

The modern practice may be appropriate for modern fandom, but -- to me -- it seems a bit to close to patting themselves on the back, and I seem to be more comfortable with the older-style technique of ConComs quietly correcting themselves when they goof. Mind you, having several times helped with Programming, I know perfectly well that it's often a hellish job to find Good Participants for many Program items (especially at certain hours), absolutely regardless of their sex/gender/orientation. And hey, I also know how difficult it usually is to find a person who would be superb at Programming, and who would volunteer to do the job.

I wish you (and all other ConCom people) the best of luck in this.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

The whole discussion has become so public of late that we could not come to the bid session without having a policy; having done so, we felt it was incumbent upon us to explain why we'd adopted it.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's great. I particularly liked that you emphasised that you _did_ think there were qualified potential panellists who remained untapped, which often remains unstated (one way or the other).

[steer.livejournal.com]

Oh dear -- bad maths:

"If we have a panel of four panel members and a moderator, then we will assume that we would expect to end up most of the time with two male members and two female members"

Selecting at random from a "large" group composed of equal numbers of men and women selected from equally talented people with no gender bias you would expect this only 6 in 16 times. The even split would actually be rarer than an uneven split one way or the other.

Of course the actuality is that you have an uneven split biased towards males showing bias in the selection policy.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have heard of the binomial theorem :-)

I did indeed work out what the distribution would be for four and five-person panels, assuming participants were picked truly at random. For an Eastercon, one would expect one or two all-male panels per day, just by chance. But you would also expect one or two all-female panels, and that rarely happens. I would be happy to end up with a distribution of people on panels that looked like the results of a truly random allocation, but I know from past experience that's unlikely to happen; there will be more items dominated by men than there will be dominated by women, even if I try to be as blind as possible in allocating participants.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Most people don't appreciate the consequence that the equal split is actually rarer than the unequal split.

But you're 100% correct that the situation I describe in no way bears a resemblance to the situation you have with massive bias in the selection.