On Thu, Jul 14, 2022 at 12:43:16PM +0100, Edward Betts wrote: > I've been writing some code to work out the gender balance of speakers at a > conference. It parses the pentabarf XML of the schedule and feeds the speaker > names to this module. > > Here's the results for Debconf 22. > > 72 speakers > > male 48 66.7% > unknown 16 22.2% > female 4 5.6% > mostly_male 2 2.8% > andy 1 1.4% > mostly_female 1 1.4% If the library works as the author intended, it will identify "Enrico" as male, which is a gender *I* don't identify with. This kind of extends to anything related to a person's identity: any software trying to determine an aspect of a person's identity is bound to eventually conflict with how a person lives their own identity. That conflict can be quite painful, so it's not surprising you get strong reactions when intending to package something that pretends to tell people what a person is, without asking them first. This external determination of identity will then extend to the library to any software or research using it. I totally understand the good intentions, but the result honestly amplifies the pain. I think the right way to get the statistics you're looking for would be to ask speakers to state their own identity on pentabarf, so that statistics are based on self-determination, rather than external overrides of it. Enrico -- GPG key: 4096R/634F4BD1E7AD5568 2009-05-08 Enrico Zini <enrico@enricozini.org>
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