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

[Giorgos Cheliotis]

Thank you Suely for the comment, although I understand you were  
addressing more your female colleagues and not me. They may agree or  
not with you, but in case I came across as too defensive in my earlier  
posts let me say that I felt I needed to defend the integrity of the  
event and the people behind it. I am not sure whether Mary truly  
believes that we actively discriminated against female scholars, but I  
think her post clearly left that suspicion lingering in the air, which  
is reason enough for me to want to set the record straight. To use  
your own words, there was no gender consideration involved, not  
inclusive, nor exclusive. Whether conference organizers should adopt  
an affirmative action policy on this I do not know, but I can say in  
all honesty that we just didn't think about that.

On Jul 17, 2009, at 4:46 PM, <suely at unisinos.br> <suely at unisinos.br>  
wrote:

> Colleagues:
>
> I don't know any of the people who manifested about this so far,  
> thus I feel very confortable to call the attention of my fellow  
> females to who is making gender differentiations here. In my  
> opinion, counting the number of females involved in academic  
> endeavours is insulting regardless of the intention being inclusive  
> or exclusive. If the organizers were anachronistic (to avoid  
> stronger words) enough to take gender into consideration, sad for  
> them. Let's not reinforce this way of thinking by reproducing it.
>
> Suely
>
>
>>>> Giorgos Cheliotis <gcheliotis.lists at gmail.com> 17/07/09 16:55 >>>
> 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. 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.
>
> But now going from these general thoughts to insinuations of
> discriminatory behavior on our part is taking it too far. I am
> surprised I have to say by the approach of Mary Bryson who may have
> good intentions at heart but who chooses to publicly criticize our
> efforts and even publicly label them as FreeCultureFail (sic), instead
> of communicating her discontent directly to the organizers first and
> trying to understand who we are and how we do what we do. Indeed Mary,
> "maybe there is a story here, or not", but I think it would have been
> better if you had done some more research on this matter before
> hinting at any possible discrimination on our part. Even your hasty
> and incorrect calculation of 4 in 40 shows that your email to the list
> was probably written without much forethought. I would have been happy
> to discuss any issues with you personally, but you never sought any
> such discussion.
>
> From my part I can just say that we tried to include the people who
> seemed the most relevant and had to also contend with the fact that
> some replied to our invitations to join the program committee and some
> did not. Gender was never a factor in the composition of the
> committee. 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.
>
> Best,
> Giorgos
>
>
> On Jul 17, 2009, at 2:29 PM, Gabriella Coleman wrote:
>
>> Mary,
>>
>> Thanks for pointing this out! A number of us, including the "X
>> woman" (Elizabeth Stark of the Yale ISP) on the committee, have been
>> debating and discussing this problem as it concerns this conference
>> but more important, how it also pertains to the wider field of
>> digital media, especially when it comes to tech and law.
>>
>> For instance, here are some other examples of similarly problematic
>> conferences when it comes to gender balance:
>>
>> http://www4.gsb.columbia.edu/citi/ugc3
>> http://www.hiit.fi/nccc/speakers.html
>>
>> And there are unfortunately many many more examples.
>>
>> Elizabeth and I have recently started to compile a list of women
>> leaders in law, technology, and internet research to highlight their
>> presence. We will soon circulate the list to get more names and
>> eventually publish on website as a resource for conference
>> organizers or those working on edited collections. Hopefully
>> Elizabeth will also jump in as she has also thought quite a bit
>> about this issue.
>>
>> I have found this problem to be pretty pervasive and have been
>> personally frustrated as well as academically intrigued. Any
>> thoughts about the skewed conference representation?
>>
>> Gabriella
>>
>>
>>>> Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:17:29 -1000
>>>> From: mary.bryson at ubc.ca <mailto:mary.bryson at ubc.ca>
>>>> To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org <mailto:air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
>>>> Subject: [Air-L] Free Culture <FAIL > Research Workshop 2009
>>>>
>>>> Take a look at the lack of inclusion of women (FreeCultureFail)
>>>   on the
>>>> Organizing and Academic Program Committees for this event.
>>>>
>>>> http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/5486
>>>>
>>>> There are 12 people on the former and 28 people on the latter.
>>>   According to
>>>> the person from the Free Culture Research Workshop group that I
>>>   contacted:
>>>>
>>>> "Based on my count, there are 4 women in all on both
>>> Committees, with
>>>> <Person X> serving on both the organizing and academic
>>> committees.
>>>>
>>>> The other 3 women serve in the academic committee..."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 4 women out of 40 people. One woman on the Organizing
>>> Committee.
>>>   That's some
>>>> kind of "free culture". Free Culture Fail, as far as I can
>>> tell.
>>>   Maybe there
>>>> is a story here. Or not.
>>>>
>>>> Mary
>>>> --
>>>> Dr. Mary K. Bryson, Professor and Director, Network of
>>> Centers and
>>>> Institutes in Education (NCIE) & Center for Cross-Faculty
>>> Inquiry
>>>   (CCFI),
>>>> Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia
>>>> CCFI: Innovation Works Here
>>>> http://ccfi.educ.ubc.ca/
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>
>>>
>>
>> ****************************************************
>> 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
>> _______________________________________________
>> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
>> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http:// 
>> aoir.org
>> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>>
>> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
>> http://www.aoir.org/
>
> _______________________________________________
> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/
>
>
> -- 
> Esta mensagem foi verificada pelo sistema de antivírus e
> acredita-se estar livre de perigo.
>
> _______________________________________________
> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/