[Air-L] Free Culture <FAIL > Research Workshop 2009

[Gabriella Coleman]

Giorgos Cheliotis wrote:
> I am one of the organizers of the workshop and in fact started it all 
> last year in Sapporo, so I am also largely responsible for the 
> composition of the committee although the opinions of many more people 
> factored in as well. I find that the gender issue is interesting and is 
> perhaps symptomatic of certain fields of academic endeavor and also 
> present in some practices of what we may broadly call 'free culture'. I 
> know more male DJ's and remixers than female, and there is more evidence 
> of that nature that is mostly anecdotal, so I cannot make any definitive 
> statements here.

Indeed, in terms of DJ's and coders there is a much larger pool of males 
than females, overwhelmingly so. As such, at non-academic events, like 
FLOSS developer conferences, I am left unsurprised when the program is 
75% male presenters or higher.

But in the academic field, the playing field is far more equal. There is 
an impressive crop of female lawyers, legal scholars, and academics of 
all ranks who work on these issues and yet, it seems to be that they are 
at times under represented. And as you note (and I could not agree with 
you more) we need some research needs to help us pin point the various 
sources or possible patterns.


  I'd like to write a paper about it though, so I'm
> slowly collecting relevant data. I think there are some salient issues 
> with respect to the participation of women in what we call 'free 
> culture'. If anyone has relevant data points, especially published work, 
> please do share.

Elizabeth and I are planning on collecting data from conferences to 
track or identify any patterns. For instance, we will be looking at 
things like 1) the gender of the organizers and what influence or role 
that may play 2) differences depending on academic fields (humanities vs 
social science vs law schools) 3) nature of the conference (academic, 
non-academic, and hybrid) and location (Europe vs North America)

It would also be interesting to collect data on "rejections" by female 
participants notably reasons for doing so. I suspect this does not exist 
right now but I see no reason why it can't be collected if someone set 
up a protocol for how conference organizer can "dump" the data once 
their conference is all (thankfully) done with.

   It
> was purely on academic merit, having shown strong interest in 
> participation in the past, having a relevant and recent track record of 
> published work, and, to a much smaller extent, a matter of serendipity 
> and familiarity with the persons involved. I do not keep a catalogue of 
> everyone in the world doing relevant research and it may be that I know 
> more male researchers in the field than female. To that end what 
> Gabriella and Elizabeth are doing will be a constructive contribution 
> that I applaud. Personally I will still use academic merit and 
> motivation/commitment as my main factors whenever anyone asks me about 
> who should be on a program committee, but I can at least check the names 
> on my mind against such a list to try and control for any bias that I 
> may have and be unaware of. For what it's worth, we had actually one 
> woman declining our invitation due to other commitments, while another 
> one was invited and didn't reply.

I took a fascinating training class last fall, the OpEd project, which I 
can't recommend enough to all the female scholars and advocates on this 
list: (http://www.theopedproject.org/cms). It is a project that seeks to 
enlarge female experts and writers for OpEds, which are overwhelmingly 
male. Given the power of OpEds to influence public opinion and policy, 
this imbalance is serious business.

One unconfirmed factoid I learned during the course (and if anyone can 
point to something that confirms this, please do and this might help you 
as well Giorgos) was that when it comes to upper management, Google 
tries to keep the percentage of women at around 40% for it it dips 
lower, they need to actively recruit female employees. If it hovers 
around 40%, then female employees tend to refer other women.

This example, if true, points to the existence of unintentional patterns 
  that can lead to biases and exclusions, which in this case emerge out 
of ones' personal networks and not overt discrimination. This dynamic is 
one that I am sure can't explain for everything and yet I suspect it may 
also play a role at times. But a first step is initiating a conversation 
and building various resources that can help alleviate a problem that I 
think or at least hope can be solved or attenuated.


All best,
Gabriella

****************************************************
Gabriella Coleman, Assistant Professor
Department of Media, Culture, & Communication
New York University
239 Greene St, 7th floor
NY NY 10003
212-992-7696
http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/faculty_bios/view/Gabriella_Coleman