@neil @lisihocke if you haven’t already, look at https://wbdirectors.co.uk/ ?

@neil At an AGM a couple of women complained about the committee being all male.

So we co-opted them.

(A local branch of the British Computer Society, decades ago.)

@neil I've tried to encourage diversity in several settings. I hope they're helpful examples.

1) The place I was employed - limited success, but they did at least get it when I pointed out *all* the images of people in marketing and recruitment materials were white. They hadn't noticed, because they weren't excluded or attuned to noticing exclusion of not-them groups. The public visibility of your org/board may be similarly polarised. Eg, listing your current all-male membership on your website may be self-reinforcing, even though it's also good transparency.

2) Author Help. My partner's self-publishing company. I suggested a Statement of Principals be added to our website. It includes statements on race, LGBTQIA+, environment, etc. At least one customer came to us because of it. It is likely it has been a factor in more, because it's the sort of thing oppressed groups might look for. Again, it's about the publicly visible aspect of the organisation being explicitly inclusive.

3) This thread. You asked very specifically for experiences in increasing volunteer board diversity. That's very niche. I nearly didn't reply because my experience isn't that. But of the people who do have experience in that area, how many are in the overrepresented group? So I have fought the niggling voice in my head that says I'm sticking my nose in where it's not wanted. It's the same voice that may be currently preventing non-male participation, so you probably need to hear about it. Go read my first couple of sentences again for an example of how it manifests.

@neil
If I was being recruited, I would look to see:

1. Does the project have a code of conduct that is reasonable and progressive? I don't want to be the person brought in to have all the incredibly basic fights and then burn out and leave. I want the incredibly basic groundwork to be something the existing members of the organization are on board with.

2. Is there governance set up in case someone currently in the project turns out to be a shit? Could they be removed without a "burned to the ground" campaign?

@neil I do this sort of work in my church context.

It requires a commitment to change across the whole group - so not just in governance, but from those involved in the day to day work as well.

It has been helpful to understand why we care - for us that comes from our understanding of God, but for your project it might be from the project goals? That helps to sustain the work.

If you don't already have reasonable representation in non-governance roles, I would start there.

@neil One thing to add, which pairs with @david_chisnall 's observation -

it’s important that the existing board deeply understand why diverse participation is valuable, specifically for your context.

For example, it might be that in order to encourage broader project participation, you may want members with first-hand experience of marginalization to spot and address cultural or structural issues. Issues that the current board may be struggling to even see except for trailing indicators.

@neil
If the board is numerate, perhaps try running a binomial test and show them the odds that they ended up with an all-male board by chance are very low. Because imposter syndrome is relatively so high amongst women, ask women on boards, or CxOs, or VP, to nominate potential candidates and then approach them directly

@neil I agree with a person who talked about systemic patterns and necessary changes here. I've been the token nondude more than once, in part because I grew up with all brothers and the guys have to adjust less to me. If you want to Truly welcome diversity, you're going to need to do some retraining for your team. Even when not specifically toxic, a fair amount of business culture is consolidated cishet whitedude culture. You have to change that, before and while you're adding diversity.

@neil

I've participated in a search committee tasked with specifically recruiting and inviting diverse participants. This took an existing leadership that wanted the group to change and grow.

Recruitment contacts were greatly enhanced by participation in and sponsorship of diversity-focused umbrella organizations. In one particular infosec case (in USA), WiCyS sponsorship bore great fruit. In aerospace, AIAA & similar professional societies had diversity efforts that I've tapped.

@neil my experience is from a large company, I’m not sure how well it would apply.

We started at the bottom and worked up. Starting with employee resource groups for women, bipoc, lgbtq+, etc. Each group chose a representative for the larger diversity council.

Originally I think it was intended to gather differing opinions and then feed them through a shredder into the garbage, but it grew into something more. Turns out there were more of us than them.

@neil @regendans Somehow I felt this may be relevant is this context: https://infosec.exchange/@david_chisnall/115281458362786763

@neil Sure let's help each other. I also a part of it. Please test and give feedback too: "SL5 Aura" Available on github

@neil A friend of mine has been one to push this in a few places, I’ve linked this to them

they’re not on fedi but if you can give me alt contact details (even in dm) I can send that along too

@neil my biggest thing is just being asked. Invite people, don’t wait for them to apply. And make it personal. Explain why you think they specifically would be a good fit.

@neil
Not a governance board, but my workplace recently did a round of "how can we improve our metrics for DEI" and I was part of the working group.

I would say, don't recruit diverse people and then require them to fit into the mold of doing everything in the exact same way as white men (in the case of a workplace, a "traditional" cis straight non-disabled neurotypical early-rising Christian white man out of the 1950s who is sole breadwinner and has a wife at home that does all the housework and childcare). You get and keep diverse people by fitting the way the board works to the people, not the other way around.

@neil

Not specifically in this context, but I have experience in various diversity programmes. One thing to highlight:

When you frame the problem as ‘we need more women’ (or more people of a particular ethnicity, or sexual orientation, or whatever) then this immediately devalues people in the group that you are trying to target. We did a lot of work at Microsoft to try to stop senior leadership boasting at all-hands meetings that they’d hired more women, because women in the audience immediately thought ‘was I hired just because I’m a woman?’ And then thought ‘do my colleagues think I was hired because I am a woman?’ Which then immediately undermines them in their job.

Not having women in leadership positions is not the problem, it is a trailing indicator of the problem. The root problems are likely to be things like:

• You are recruiting from places women avoid, or which favour men.
• You are recruiting via your networks, where women are underrepresented.
• You are encouraging an in-group culture that makes everyone not in that group feel excluded and this disproportionately affects women (you will also be losing other people for the same reason).
• You are organising things at times that are inconvenient for people with carer responsibilities, which disproportionately affects women.
• You are looking for people who have a lot of free time and this systematically excludes a load of people (you can’t fix this as a volunteer project, but you can push for government equity initiatives).

Remember: your goal is to find the best people. The fact that roughly 52% of the population are self-deselecting before you even get to evaluate them on relevant metrics is a significant indicator that you are failing at this. Keep that framing in mind.

@neil I haven't dealt with diversity balancing, but from both being on boards and reporting to them I would offer one useful tip: if you want the current board to get on side, speak privately to one or two of them who would be sympathetic and ask them to raise a more diverse board as an agenda item at the next meeting.

This makes it official, shows allyship, and will help get the ball rolling. An actionable item could then be to identify 3-5 potential new board members before the next meeting.

@neil the thing I have to say from my experience doing this for a small convention is: it's probably gonna be messy. Probably a person on the board or a friend of a guy on the board is doing some shit that needs to stop in order to make the space welcoming for more diverse members. Probably no one will want to tell him to stop because he's a friend of long standing. This is usually where diversity efforts end; complaints have no official process to go through and never get heard...

@neil Is there a search sub-committee? Do you advertise on "normal" charity boards, or just FOSS ones? Are you able to compensate? Have you expicitly said you want to diversify the board?

If you do manage to find someone, it's hard to make the board representative without making that person a representative of their minority.

@neil while this article is about “events”, advice is applicable to the #floss project board too : https://labs.ripe.net/author/becha/spring-and-summer-events-season-2022/

#Inclusion is it possible to participate online ?
#Diversity have a Code of Conduct

#Equity be explicit about your ethics

#Justice make it about political goals of FLOSS (& not only “tech”) ;

work on solving systemic problems -> that will attract different applicants!

@neil Check out the Python Movie on YouTube (sorry, don't have the link). There is a insightful segment of it on how Python worked to bring in more diversity to its community.

@neil First thank you. Secondly, because women don’t get promoted as readily they won’t think of themselves as eligible for board membership. So that means you have to encourage women to join who may think they don’t fit the criteria. Maybe even be explicit in saying board membership does not require ALL but only SOME qualifications. I find women often don’t apply because they think they don’t have all the experience on the list. Def ask other women for recs.

@neil lots of tips here : https://wiki.techinc.nl/Ladies_Night#Increasing_the_gender_diversity #justice #equity #diversity #inclusion #jedi

@neil
1. Does the board *want* to change? If not, it'll be rough.
2. If yes, does the board accept that this will be hard work?
3. Do the board know the barriers to joining (time, money, impact)?
4. Are they prepared to address the issues? (Different meeting hours, better location, paying etc)
5. Don't reach out to women already on boards - they're already busy! But ask them if they can recommend women who would be good candidates.
6. Accept that you might have a low "hit rate".

@seeh @neil that is a pretty passive aggressive way to communicate.
I'm like Neil and struggle to understand what you were communicating in the first place.

@neil Of course, you know what github is I have it also on the other platform if you prefer others

@neil Neil, do you know what open source is? Linux for example is open source. And many open sources is on GitHub

@neil very welcome. Thanks for taking this on.