I see some rough consensus that more diversity/a wider spectrum of
viewpoints (across various metrics) in various ISTF groups would be
helpful, with support for Arturo's language:
The problem is to bring new people (younger people, women, from more
countries, different languages, etc.) to write RFCs, to participate/be
interested in the IETF and how we involve/prepare these people to
become
our leaders and not just participants.
This is a goal that everyone can help carry out, and there's no
reason not to start working individually at this now - especially if
you are a company that understands the IETF's work. However, the
original message raised two other points:
- Lack of diversity in our leadership becomes a self-perpetuating
problem, because people who are not represented in the IETF
leadership are less likely to dedicate their time and effort to
the IETF.
- The lack of diversity in the IETF leadership undermines our
credibility and challenges our legitimacy as an International
Standards Development Organization.
It's telling that the third point wasn't mentioned by anyone else, as
far as I saw - in fact, the words "credibility" and "legitimacy" have
not appeared in this thread since it's inception. The "governance of
the internet" has been an recent topic of international discussion
(as far as I can see as a news consumer), and this group's leadership
composition may be a relevant aspect of that discussion. It makes
Arturo's point even more compelling.
-Will
PS:
The school studies were done with random (e.g. public school) and
non-self-selected (e.g. parent selected) groups as the subjects.
AFAIK the IETF is pretty much a completely self-selected group of
people and most especially the women are self-selected - and I
wouldn't consider that the school study applies much given those
difference. I mentioned it because its conclusion - that women and
men are "smarter" when separate (yup - paraphrasing) seems to be at
odds with the other mentioned conclusion that "groups are smarter
the more women in them".
In fact, the random nature of the participants is the reason we can
generalize studies across broad populations. The standard you set
would render pretty much any study applicably irrelevant unless it
was made of IETF participants.
But I think that entire discussion leads us astray - this is not a
listserve of social scientists, and these issues and their citations
are charged in various ways across the world, along with ways we can
define diversity. We all also carry some of our own viewpoints into
these discussions; for example, I would initially treat a less
diverse slate of chosen leaders from a more diverse pool of
candidates as suspect. I would be happy to engage anyone 1-on-1 if
they have further questions about this area (or point #2) from my own
experience as a student on several hiring and governance committees
with university administrators, dealing with the exact issues raised
on this thread, or as a young person that joined up thanks to the
open membership policies and legitimacy discussed elsewhere.