Reflections on diversity and what we've learned from a pandemic
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
01:10
Hello, so we will start the talk of Paul Reuland, reflections on diversity and what we've learned from a pandemic.
01:24
Okay, can people hear me? Yes, okay, excellent. Yes, so I want to speak a little bit about diversity, what it means, why we want it, how you can achieve more diversity,
01:42
and how you can keep also more diversity. First, a little bit about me. I've worked at Plone since 2003. I work at the Clean Clothes Campaign, which is a non-profit organization working for garment workers worldwide to improve the working conditions
02:02
of people in the global garment industry. I do have side interests. I am very active in various open data, open source, and open licensing movements, and you can generally find me online on Twitter and things like that under polyester. And when I say Plone, I mean all variations of Plone.
02:24
We're using Quaive, we're using Castle, and I have been on too many Plone versions that I can even bother to remember. I started using Plone from version 0.99 Beta 3
02:41
and have liked it ever since. But this talk won't be about Plone, just so you know. So, I'm talking about diversity. Diversity is much wider than just tickboxing saying like, oh, we need to look at gender.
03:01
It includes many more aspects. It includes LGBTQ, it includes cultural, ethnic, language, class, many different aspects beyond what some people just say like, oh, we need to look at the number of women. That's also very important, but it's only one aspect.
03:22
So that's what we're aiming for. We're aiming for more diversity and why I will try to show in a little bit. So that's the diversity part. How do we improve the diversity? Well, that's where equity comes in. And I will explain a little bit more what is meant by equity
03:42
because not everybody is that familiar with the term and it can also sometimes be slightly controversial and controversy in this case is a good thing. And what we finally aim to be reaching for is inclusion and inclusion is not a state.
04:00
Inclusion is a permanent process. It's not something where you can say, oh, we've done it. So equity is the tool, inclusion is the practice and a practice means that you need to keep continuing doing it. It's not something you can say like, oh, done, now we're done.
04:22
And I've got to address the elephant in the room. Can a cis white male talk about diversity? Yes, you can. And I am aware of the irony. And before people start shouting code of conduct at me
04:42
and say that was a violent cartoon, it's a cartoon. It's colors on a field. Sorry about that. So why do we want diversity? Well, without diverse perspectives and experiences,
05:01
products and services can and will fail many, many users, actually the majority of users. Sometimes it's thought of like minority groups. It's like actually it's the majority, especially if you include the gender dimension.
05:21
So it's not minority groups. It's like it's the majority, the vast majority. And some examples I will show, ranging from the hilarious to the very cringe. First example is what I call the Male Aerospace and Space Agency,
05:44
MASA, well known. They famously sent Sally Wright, the first female astronaut from NASA up into space in 1983,
06:01
and they suggested that she should take a hundred tampons for a week-long trip. Just a hint, that's plenty. And it clearly shows that there were not that many women because they would have known. The other part, look at this.
06:24
I'm sure there is a demographic that is both a wheelchair user and has telescopic arms, but that's actually a very small subset. So for the majority of wheelchair users, there is not a workable solution. I mean, yeah, nice thought, but shame about the way it was implemented.
06:45
And that's what you quite often see with tick box thinking to diversity. The next one is also quite painful. Who can tell me what's wrong with this? I don't know if you know how braai works,
07:02
but you should feel it. That's kind of the point. So somebody in the red like, oh, we need to put braai up there. Yep, done. Yeah, nice try, not really helpful.
07:21
And it also shows again, probably no blind person was involved in the designing of this because she or he or they would have noticed this. The next I would like to call extreme wheelchairing challenges. First of all, they probably thought like, oh, we need a wheelchair ramp,
07:44
no matter how steep it is and how unusual it's going to be. Then the second person was instructed to put in handrails and the handrails had to be secured and actually we should be thankful that handrail person came in second and sort of did these crossbars to secure the railing
08:02
because now the wheelchair ramp is completely unusual. Which is probably good because otherwise you would probably die if you tried to use that wheelchair ramp. So sometimes two fuck-ups can create a workable, if non-accessible solution because now nobody can use this.
08:23
Sometimes the mind boggles. And people say like, yeah, but that's because you are having too many rules. That leads to these kinds of stupidity. No, it shows a lack of lived experiences. If the designer team had included a blind person
08:41
or a person in a wheelchair or at least a person who regularly deals with these kinds of people, they would have noticed that this is not workable. Now we get to the more evil and racial undertones of this. Yes, there actually was a person called, or still is a person called Dana Lonehill
09:03
and she tried, she is a Native American, and tried to register at Facebook. Nope, not happening. Your last name is not a valid last name. But my family has been called like this for hundreds of years actually
09:23
before you idiots came to this continent. Yeah, so names can often have, it's a real issue when you deal with so-called real name policy. It's often a problem for indigenous names. It's also quite often a problem for like drag queens, transgender persons.
09:48
If you insist or if you build a site for somebody who insists on a real name policy that has real bad consequences for a whole number of people who don't want to give their real name
10:00
or whose real name may not comply to what you think a real name looks like. And it gets even worse. This is quite bad. Because the person quite clearly has their eyes open.
10:21
So this is, yeah, speaks for itself I think. Next one is actually a movie. I'll let it play out and you will see what is the problem. A soap dispenser. It works for the first person.
10:47
Is it broken? Tension mounts. Is it broken now? It just worked.
11:00
It's not broken. It's racist. Yes. It recognizes people with white skin. It does not recognize people with black skin.
11:22
This is again clearly a sign that the design team were white people and the engineers were white people that tested this. But it also shows like no real thought behind anything.
11:40
And yeah, this is incredibly cringe. But in a pandemic this not only applies to something like a soap dispenser but also to various medical technologies. This becomes actually dangerous. So that is why more diversity is needed.
12:00
Because if you don't have that diversity you're literally failing users and that can have real consequences. So how do we go about increasing that diversity? That is called equity. And it's sometimes confused with equality.
12:22
And it's not the same. Equity nowadays even has its own symbol. It's a pretty symbol. And the symbol actually comes from the way it's most often explained with a picture. And that is this picture. Equality is like we give everybody the same.
12:43
We pretend that everybody is the same. We say like we're all equal here. You all have the same opportunities. So the outcomes must be the same. Not necessarily true. Different people might need different helps to get to the desired outcome.
13:00
And that is called equity. So that is to get you away from the thought that if I support one person in this way I have to support everybody in exactly the same way because we're all the same. We're not because we're not leaving from the same place. So equity and equality are not the same and you need to consciously use equity to increase the outcome that you want.
13:28
And of course this is not the end of it because the expanded version of this is this. You have equality. You have equity. You have the reality which is where we're leaving from which is very unequal
13:43
and what you actually want to achieve is liberation where the systemic obstacles are removed, namely the barrier that prevents you from seeing the fun game. But until we reach that liberation stage, which probably will take a little while,
14:02
we will need that equity as a stepping stone. So how does this relate to a pandemic? Well, the pandemic broke out and it showed a great many fault lines in our society
14:26
and it actually accentuated them. It wasn't the great equaliser that some said in the first few weeks, like, ooh, we're all sort of like it's putting us all in the same boat.
14:40
Some boats had holes, others were a luxurious cruise liner. So we were all thrown on boats, but those were not the same boats. So there are some lessons that we can learn from that. There are also some things that we should definitely avoid in future and I will go over a number of them now.
15:03
So the pandemic, apart from many other consequences, but it was also a great experiment in how we worked, how we communicate together, how we make decisions together and that's where I'm focusing on.
15:21
And I do this mostly from not so much in IT background, but from my clean clothes campaign background because I sort of decided at the start of the pandemic that my campaign needed me more than my other hobbies and jobs because government workers had a pretty rough time in the pandemic.
15:41
So a bit of background. We are over 250 organizations worldwide, ranging from labor rights organizations, women's rights organizations, trade unions, you name it, consumer rights organizations. Many, actually most, are located in what we call the global south
16:09
and what complicates our work also is that we work in a lot of high-risk countries like China, Myanmar, Luxembourg. No, sorry, not Luxembourg.
16:21
That was a joke. No, but high-risk countries, which also means we have quite high security demands, meaning we can also not use some over-the-counter stuff because most of what is based in the cloud is actually also susceptible to subpoenas
16:41
and other things that you do not want if you do not want to put people in harm's way. So that also influenced a lot of what we could do and what we couldn't do. So not all of this may be relevant to you if you deal only with people in nice democratic societies,
17:01
although the last few years have also seen that that can change quite dramatically even in supposedly secure countries. And also, well, the people that we work with have like a medium level of tech skills, not for you lot, medium tech skills, but for general population,
17:24
I would say medium tech skills, but we are faced with a very low level of tech access and that has to do with the fact that many are based in the global south. So the first thing that everybody was sort of like,
17:43
yeah, when the pandemic hit and lockdown started, it was like, oh, we all need to switch to work from home. And for many people that sounded like great, some of us had been working from home for a long time, others hadn't. And, yay, define home.
18:05
Working from home is great if you have a home. It's not that great if you live in communal living conditions. Many people live with three generations, 12 people in a 30 square meter shack.
18:23
Try to video conference from that while grandma is cooking and the kids are screaming. It's not very relaxing to work. So working from home, yeah, sounds great. Indeed, if your home is yours, if your home isn't dilapidated,
18:44
if your home has internet access, that really helps, which is not at all common in the global south. Many people had to go to the office or to the local variety of Starbucks, which is usually called Kenyan coffee or something mysterious,
19:03
because there is no internet in the places where they live. It's only in the centers of town. So, yeah, that was the first thing. Working from home doesn't mean the same thing for everybody.
19:20
And, yeah, what really hit us, we were having a call with our partners in Cambodia and the business end of the call was over, so you end up in the social part. Social call, we needed those. I still do not apologize for having a little social chat at the end of a meeting,
19:43
but it was a bit of a rude awakening, because, yeah, the parents on the call were sort of like bitching about how difficult it was to have the kids in remote education. They were like, ooh, all the teachers are sort of stumbling and it's kind of funny and it's kind of difficult,
20:02
so they were kind of bonding over how difficult it was, this remote education. And then the Cambodians came in with this. That hit like a brick.
20:35
Second Cambodian comes in.
20:45
I could say it wasn't a social call anymore. It hit hard. So, some of the takeaways you got from that. First of all, that's intergenerational.
21:00
That means her children have less opportunity and their children will have less opportunity. This is a systemic problem. Second, we were like, okay, so you actually were paying extra so we could have a social chat, because you have to pay for your phone cards.
21:25
So you were actually paying so that we could have a nice chat. Not good. So, we did some emergency measures and we were like, okay,
21:40
we need to start paying people for this meeting time, if only it is by sending them phone cards or phone credits. If we want to take up two hours of somebody's time and they have to pay, it's a ridiculously small amount, but it's still, it's metered access, so it's like, yeah, we need to reimburse that. We need to start reimbursing that, because that's now what we have to do.
22:03
You do get into some other issues, like how do you get small amounts of money all across the world. That's not easily solved. This is for Gottfried, who isn't here. But trust me, no, it does not help to send small amounts.
22:30
Gottfried is at the Bitcoin conference in Amsterdam. No, it does not help, but there are other ways. Yeah, but soon, as we all settled into like prolonged periods
22:49
of having video meetings where before we relied a lot more on in-person meetings, other issues also came to light and a lot of those are cultural issues
23:03
and those can be both implicit and explicit. And one of the things is, for instance, the difference between high-context societies and low-context societies. High-context societies are quite often found in Asia,
23:22
but also Eastern Mediterranean, and what it means, and low-context is, for instance, most of Northern Europe and the US. Low-context means for a meeting, you get the agenda and it pretty much does what it says on the tin. You go through the agenda, you cross off the items on the agenda
23:45
and what is said is what is the content of the meeting. You don't need a lot of context. It does what it says on the tin, whereas in a lot of Asian societies,
24:01
but also Eastern Mediterranean, Middle Eastern societies, it's a lot about what is not being said. It's about who's in the room. It's about how long people are silent, how they look at each other. Decision-making, for instance, in Jordan, involves drinking copious amounts of tea.
24:22
Any discussion is 90% tea and 10% words, and then at the end, a decision is somehow reached. So you need to know a lot more about the context, about who is who, to understand how decision-making goes,
24:42
and this translates extremely lousy into Zoom, because Zoom is very much sort of like talking hats, and if the culture is not purely based around talking hats, that's a problem. You can counteract that, but you need to be first.
25:00
You're just aware of it. If you're not aware of it, you're just going to ignore it. And I'm sorry, Retsu, I'm going to massacre your language, but Japanese actually has a concept for it. It's called harage. My pronunciation is really bad, but what it literally translates to is stomach art, and it's basically saying things without saying things.
25:24
It's about how you behave yourself, how you present yourself without uttering a word that is as important and probably even more important than what you actually say. And you need to be aware of those differences
25:40
if you work with people from different cultures. Also, things like having eye contact or not. If you are from a Western society, you probably expect everybody to look at the camera as a sign of respect. Don't expect that from people in the Middle East,
26:04
because looking directly at somebody for a longer period of time is extremely rude. So if they are looking away from the camera on a Zoom call, that doesn't mean they're doing site emails, as you would expect if you see that happening
26:21
from a Western person. No, it means they are actually participating in a meeting where they are not looking directly at you, because that is considered very, very rude. So those are all things that you need to take into account in order to have more equality and have more inclusion between partners
26:40
to be aware of those differences. It's not the end solution to all, but if you're not aware of them, you will get nowhere. And if you deal a lot with Indian people, a lot of Indian people have the Indian head bobble, and the Indian head bobble actually can mean a lot of things.
27:01
It can mean yes, no. It can mean maybe. It's a whole language in and of itself. So if you deal a lot with people from India, it pays off to learn a little bit more about what the different head bobbles mean and not consider them amusing. No, they are a language. They are a communication tool,
27:21
and you should definitely learn what the differences mean, because, yeah, it's easy to make fun of because it kind of looks weird in Western eyes, but no, it's a valid communication form, and you need to invest the time. You owe it to your partners in conversation
27:41
to learn a little bit about it and to learn to understand it. You may make some mistakes at first, but nobody cares about the mistakes. It's about the effort that you put in that counts. Another part of diversity that came up a lot during the pandemic, and that actually,
28:02
it was good that people started talking about it, is neurodiversity, and there, the results were quite mixed. Actually, quite a number of people with, on what is called the autism spectrum, actually, in the beginning, loved the focus.
28:20
They loved not being in the office. They loved not being around other people yapping in their ears the whole time. They loved the focus. They were really productive, really happy until other tools came in. So it can be a mixed bag because also neurodiversity, it is a spectrum.
28:41
Individuals have different aspects of it, and indeed, focus really helps, and then there's the anti-focus app from hell that people really couldn't deal with, and especially people on the spectrum. Slack is designed to be as loud
29:00
and in your face at all times. It's like, hey, here, sticker, important. Stop doing what you're doing now. I want to distract you, to the point where it became really, really difficult for people on the autism spectrum to even use it, and if your company decides that Slack is now
29:24
or an equivalent matter most or whatever, that that is now the only means of communication, that's an issue. So if you decide that something like that is a useful tool, it's probably good to ask,
29:40
is everybody really comfortable with it, and if not everybody is comfortable with it, then have an alternative. Have some bridge to a slightly less loud tool, so that those people can also get the benefits, and the people who are happy to use Slack, matter most, whatever, can keep on using it,
30:03
but don't force some people who will literally drive to not being productive anymore and feeling really bad to use that as their only means of communication, because that decreases the diversity, because, yeah, these tools are not fit for everybody.
30:27
We also came across quite a few issues of mental health, especially as the lockdowns were longer and longer and longer, and then in the summer we could all stop, and then the next winter it was like, oh, we're in lockdown again.
30:43
Some issues came up. The first is, again, a Japanese concept, hikikomori, which is those who have retreated from the world. It's a known phenomenon in Japan, but it happens among younger and older people, people who just retreat to their room,
31:03
and we have them even now. Now that, at least in the Netherlands, the restrictions have lifted, some people just don't bother to go out anymore. They don't even go to the shops. They don't go out to a bar. They're just like, no, can't deal with the world anymore, have been locked in my room for so long.
31:22
Yeah, they talk online to some people, but they've sort of lost the will to actually interact with other people, and that's a mental health issue, and, yeah, the pandemic wasn't quite helpful in that. So it pays to look around your organization
31:40
if people are struggling with that and to have an open conversation if that is the case, and if so, you should probably call in some professional help to address that. Another is the 24-7 culture. Because we were all at home, we could all be reached on whatever medium
32:01
and you were sort of expected to answer in a reasonable amount of time. That can be extremely stressful, depending on your situation, but that whole feeling of you have to be on 24-7 is draining. Some people cope with it quite well.
32:22
Congratulations, I happen to be one of those. I'm fine with it, but I know other people really, really, really aren't, and you need to be quite aware of that. And another one is the constant camera pressure of having all these online meetings,
32:42
and it will surprise absolutely no one that this is a gendered thing. The awareness of having other people look at you all the time hits women quite different than it hits men. Also, in larger meetings, be aware of what some people send other people,
33:03
mainly women or trans women, on a chat through the one-on-one thing. If you, in a large meeting, consider turning that feature off so that participants cannot directly message other people.
33:21
Because this is a gendered issue, we have seen issues of, yeah, not nice things being said to mostly women in a chat because they are online or on camera the whole time. Another thing to be aware of is agility.
33:42
Our network has people from 16 to 91 years of age, and as you can gather, and for many, English is not their second language, it's their third or their fourth. And then let's say the under-30s use a lot of OMG and other online things and emoji,
34:01
that is actually a fifth language. So if you're dealing interculturally and intergenerationally, try to limit your use of Yargon and pop culture, or limit your pop culture references to K-pop, because everybody loves K-pop. But limit the use of Western
34:22
because not everybody might know what you're talking about. See anything wrong with this picture? This is what is called digital nomads in Bali. It became a thing even more than it was before
34:40
during the pandemic, but it has, I call it a dark underbelly. It has very colonial overtones. People going to these lovely places, which happen to be in the global south with a very poor local population, and work from there.
35:02
It's also eroding the tech space. It's basically saying, I have the luxury, I'm a 20 to 30 year old, I can go anywhere and make shit loads of money on my Mac, and I don't pay tax in my home country, and I'm going to be quite rich. And once I get kids and I need support,
35:20
I go back to my home country. So you're basically eroding the tech space, you're eroding the healthcare basis. I have big issues with that. And you're also actively getting the opposite of diversity. You get a group of employees that is in their 20s and 30s, usually from a country that has unlimited visa access
35:42
to most of those places. So yeah, if you start hiring, and one of your things is like, we're a company of digital nomads, you can choose to do so, but allow me the freedom to say you're actually advertising the opposite of my values,
36:00
so I will be spending my money elsewhere. Yeah. I know this may be controversial, but I really have a problem. I've seen a lot of these digital nomad places, and ugh. Warning signs that you need to pay attention
36:21
to what you're doing. If somebody repeatedly doesn't show up for video meetings, there's usually a deeper and sometimes systemic reason. And that can be anything from missing childcare to, yeah, a lot of other mental health issues. If somebody doesn't show up for a meeting
36:42
where they're supposed to be more than three times, there is something deeper going on. So follow that. And also, if your decisions that you reached on that meeting are ignored, then it probably wasn't actually a carried decision. You thought you had reached the decision,
37:01
but most people were ignored, and then that means they will ignore your decision and just do what they want to do. So that's a very clear warning sign that your process wasn't right. So on online meetings, you have to invest moderate resources so people can fully join, and that can indeed be paying them to get childcare
37:23
during those two hours that you have the meeting, paying them to get the bus to the city centre so they can actually have a decent internet connection. It can be those simple things. Be mindful of various dominance factors on meetings. That can be language, that can be gender,
37:40
it can be culture, it can be time zones. Don't forget that one. The one who always is at the losing end of the time zone game, meaning they will always be in the meeting at 11 o'clock at night, have a tougher stance than those who are fresh in the morning. Sometimes it's unavoidable, but at least be aware of it,
38:00
and maybe even shift it sometimes so that other people have to get up uncomfortably early in the morning, because if you always do it at the same time, some people will be at a disadvantage. And there are probably more. I'm not going to list all of them because I don't want you to have tick box exercises. It depends very much on the situation.
38:21
And, yeah, you are not the yardstick of what works. Something that works for you may not work for other people. So that's the most important thing that I want you to take away from this. For the annual get-togethers that many people are now doing again,
38:42
visa inequality is a thing. Some people can travel anywhere, some people can't. So plan accordingly. If you are having a meeting in, like, let's say Europe, you need six months lead time because people need visas. Or consider moving your annual meeting from your company to Turkey
39:01
or another place where everybody can get in without ridiculous visa restrictions, because the EU is getting more bitchy and annoying about letting people in. And the US probably also. So you could probably find a place that is accessible to everybody. And also take family into account
39:21
and other black pets or people who have to care for others. If you require your employees to be present, pay so that their cats can get a two-week in a nice cat hotel because they are important part of their lives.
39:43
Yeah, little things like that. So practical lessons and tips. One size fits no one particularly well. So always have multiple options. And one thing, one very practical thing, we always allow 24 hours after a decision was made on a Zoom call
40:02
to come back on it, to say, like, actually, we were not that involved. So people have 24 hours to say, like, nah, we were not hurt, we couldn't voice it because of whatever reason, we need a redo. And that's actually quite helpful. And this is super important.
40:23
Do not screen share any document. Share. Screen share doesn't allow the other participant to use translation tools. Screen share is really horrible if you're on the phone. Share in advance so people can actually read the documents at their own place using the tools that they need,
40:42
might be screen reader, might be other accessibility tools. Screen share is horrible for people who have different abilities. And I said options more and more. And for those who say all of this is hard to do, just try.
41:00
It's another 80-20 problem. You won't get it perfect, but a little goes a long way. And on options, as I said, people need different tools to access and process information. And it can be both in the form, audio versus written, and language.
41:20
So whenever I hear Fred say screen cast, screen cast, screen cast, I'm like, transcriptions, transcriptions, transcriptions, because not everybody can see a screen cast or is particularly good at following them. I want to plug Whisper. Whisper is an AI-based tool to make, it does voice to text,
41:45
it does it really well, and it translates into 90 languages. It's awesome. And it runs on your own computer. So you can actually use it on sensitive material. If you don't have a super-duper GPU, it runs slow, but it runs.
42:02
I can really recommend it. It can translate into languages most of you probably have never heard about. And it can do it to and from those languages. It's not perfect, but it's great. Start using it, and hopefully it will improve more. And, yeah, I had to do some loving thingy,
42:21
because these were the tips for our own organisations, but I want to finish with carry the love forward. So take it also to the things you build, and most of you build things for other people. So sometimes your client might need a gentle slap.
42:41
So if your client asks you to build a thing that only has binary gender options, you might want to tell them, it's 2022, are you sure you only want to offer two gender options? Really? And also be aware that for at least 3 billion people, their phone is their computer.
43:02
It's the only computer they will ever have. If you build a solution that only works on a laptop or a desktop, you're purposely excluding half the world population. If that's your choice, so be it. I think that's a bit assholery behaviour,
43:20
but people need to be aware that for most of the world's population, their phone is their main access to the internet. And also do things like alt text, accessibility, transcriptions of podcasts, and in the end it's all about empathy and that leads to inclusion.
43:43
And I don't mean literally slap, because I've been using a lot of the slapping meme, but don't go through life slapping, because if you go through life slapping, you will always end up meeting somebody who is bigger and will slap back. So please stop slapping Robin.
44:02
And thank you. So we don't have time for questions, but there is a coffee break now. I'm available for the rest of the conference. Happy to chat.
44:34
Present for speakers from the city of Namur. Thank you for the talk.