[ih] historical barriers to equality for women in internetworking

[Miles Fidelman]

It strikes me that the entire paper can be summarized in this excerpt:

*"Many individuals spoke of encounters observed where IETF behavior has 
been very combative and aggressive during working group discussions, 
which makes it harder to go up to the microphone and contribute since 
there is fear of getting shouted at. No one interviewed had personal 
experience of being shouted at but many said it took a lot of courage to 
get up and speak, or they just resorted to contributing via mailing 
lists. Several individuals mentioned that these observed aggressive 
encounters triggered other diversity elements. These can factor into how 
they as an individual respond (or shy away from) discussion, and relate 
to cultural norms or an upbringing where you wait for your turn to 
speak. In some more aggressive dialogue encounters, waiting for your 
turn to speak means you never get a voice."

What was missing were specific comments from some of the (few) women 
who've been attending IETF from the early days.

I kind of wonder if what it comes down to is that IETF (and the industry 
in general) is a place for strong personalities & super-competent people 
- and that underlying all the push for DEI is really an intent to make 
the place more accommodating to those who can't give as well as they get.

Maybe my sample is somewhat select - MIT, BBN, a few places of similar 
caliber - but all of the women engineers I've worked with (and a few 
program officers, managers, executives) - have been exceptionally 
competent, and about as far from pushovers as you can get (the word 
"badass" comes to mind).  If anything, it seems like having to be the 
best in the room, to be taken seriously, has worked to their advantage.

I wonder - to the female "Internet old farts" on this list - what's your 
take?  Do we really need to make IETF, and the industry, kinder and 
gentler, to accomodate newcomers - or should be we concentrating on 
toughening people up, in general?  Or something else?

Miles Fidelman
*

**

*
*




Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
> On 12-Oct-23 13:00, Greg Skinner via Internet-history wrote:
>> Some of you may have seen the results of the recent research done to 
>> understand issues women face who participate in the IETF. [1] In the 
>> process of searching for flag day experiences, I found a report 
>> published in February 1983 that, in a similar manner, discusses 
>> barriers to equality faced by some female grad students and staff 
>> members of MIT’s Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science labs. 
>> [2]  Deborah Estrin, Liza Martin, and Karen Sollins contributed to 
>> this report.
>
> A great find, Greg. It would be fascinating to know how the authors 
> feel about it today.
>
> Women in IT is a field of study in its own right, e.g. a couple of 
> references from one of my own publications:
>
> 24. T. Haigh, “Masculinity and the machine man: Gender in the history 
> of data processing,” in Gender Codes: Why Women Are Leaving Computing, 
> T. J. Misa Ed., Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley, 2010.
>
> 25. J. Abbate, Recoding Gender: Women’s Changing Participation in 
> Computing. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT
> Press, 2012.
>
>    Brian
>
>>
>> —gregbo
>>
>> [1] 
>> https://www.ietf.org/media/documents/Experience_of_Women_Participating_in_the_IETF.pdf
>>
>> [2] https://dome.mit.edu/handle/1721.3/196182
>>


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