There have been a few discussions recently around how to make EA a more welcoming and safer place for women. Some of these involve discussions around the appropriateness of nonprofessional motivations for swapcard / 1-1s (e.g. using swapcard to solicit romantic relationships, hitting on people at EAGs). The following includes suggestions from discussions with people interested in making EAGs a better space for women.[1]
Request:
Can we make it very explicit and unambiguous what the EAG + EAGx’s event policies are? (apologies if this is already listed somewhere).
Explicit policy, transparent criteria or examples of what would constitute a breach, and clear potential consequences of various severity of actions are made available up front.
A acknowledgement of these policies + consequences as a pre-requisite for attendance (e.g. a “I acknowledge and agree to follow CEA’s event policies” checkbox during application form)
An (optionally anonymous) place to submit complaints, including for immediate action if needed
The process should ideally allows those accused (if not anonymous) to present their perspective, though this might be deanonymising for the complainant, so this should be discussed with them.
Updates to complainants within a pre-specified timeframe
End of conference survey that explicitly asks about things like behaviour that makes people feel subjectively unwelcome, or experiences that make people think they were being solicited for a nonprofessional purpose. These can be stratified by gender, cause area, age, and experience within EA or number of EAG attendances for both complainants as well as potential perpetrators.
Summary statistics, as well as anonymised log of complaints and actions taken, are anonymised and published.
Less directly relevant / more tentative but may interact with the above:
-Clear alcohol policy during EAGs
-An official (but clearly non-endorsed) compilation of post-EAG socials that are open-invite. This serves the less professional + more social functions of EAGs for those who feel like this is an important element of EAG, and makes it easier for newcomers who wish to attend to know what might be happening instead of ad-hoc facebook groups / word of mouth / getting links to google docs from friends, while making it feel less exclusive. (Unsure about the value of this, though some previous EAGs have had slack channels within the official slack that served this purpose)
-Surveying attendees for what norms they’d prefer at EAGs (though this may be subject to selection bias)
Anecdotally this is a very important point of feedback for a subset of attendees, including on whether they feel like EA is the right community for them. Separately, I do think this is a low hanging fruit for the EA community (more tractable than trying to coordinate community group norms), as well as a very important place for the EA as a collective to walk the talk, as a community who supposedly unites under a shared goal of doing good better.
Apologies, haven’t put much thought into how much of the following would be actually good in practice, or looked into how much of this already exists. This is a list that covers some areas I think seem important on first principles (clear + transparent processes, accountability, and data collection to allow better decision making in future), and not based on research into existing best practices.
I agree that this is really important. When I started working at CEA in 2015, one of the main things my predecessor had been working on was developing anti-harassment practices for CEA’s conferences, and I continued her work. The conference materials from Geek Feminism were helpful to us in developing our practices.
The place where all EAG and EAGx attendees agree to the standards is the code of conduct, which must be acknowledged when registering for an event. The text on the registration form for the upcoming EAG Bay Area is:
At EA Global and social events associated with EA Global, you agree to:
Respect the boundaries of other participants.
Look out for one another and try to help if you can.
Adhere to national and local health and safety regulations, as well as any additional policies we institute for EA Global.
This is a professional learning and networking event. These behaviors don’t belong at EA Global or related events:
Unwanted sexual attention, or sexual harassment of any kind.
Using the event app to request meetings for romantic or sexual reasons.
Offensive, disruptive, or discriminatory actions or communication.
We understand that human interaction is complex. If you feel able, please give each other the benefit of explaining behavior you find unwelcome or offensive.
If you’re asked to stop a behavior that’s causing a problem for someone, we expect you to stop immediately.
By submitting this form, you confirm that you will adhere to this Code of Conduct, which applies at the conference and all related social events.
You can contact us at hello@eaglobal.org if you have any questions.
This text wasn’t on our website, but we’ve added it to our FAQ page now. Thanks for suggesting this! It’s also referenced in the attendee guides, for example this text from the EAG DC guide: “Harassment, bullying, or unwanted romantic/sexual attention is unacceptable at our events, and we encourage you to report any of this behavior to us.”
All our conferences have at least one community contact person, whose role is to be available for personal or interpersonal problems that come up. When a problem is raised during a conference, they’re there to deal with it as soon as possible. Sometimes attendees contact us after an event with something they’ve been mulling over.
I’ve often been one of the contact people. My sense is that pre-specified criteria for what constitutes something like “offensive actions” or “unwanted sexual attention” and what the response should be isn’t realistic or a good idea. A lot of factors play into what constitutes a problem — words, body language, setting (the career fair vs. an afterparty vs. a deserted street outside the venue at night), power and status differences between the people, etc. Responses should be shaped by the wishes of the person who experienced the problem — people have different preferences about how much action they want us to take, whether they want us to act immediately or give them time to think over the options, etc.
Besides the community contact people at events, attendees can also report problems anonymously on the event survey, or on the community health team’s anonymous contact form.
My sense is that pre-specified criteria for what constitutes something like “offensive actions” or “unwanted sexual attention” and what the response should be isn’t realistic or a good idea. A lot of factors play into what constitutes a problem — words, body language, setting (the career fair vs. an afterparty vs. a deserted street outside the venue at night), power and status differences between the people, etc.
This makes sense to me + and I agree RE: other factors that can change whether something is a problem or not. I think I was too certain in my wording of the original bullet point, and can see where it could be harmful if applied too broadly. I guess my prior here is that most people are not intentionally wanting to cause harm, but do so because of different expectations or communication norms or social abilities. If true, I wonder whether some clear examples that are generally seen to be controversially unwanted by those on the receiving end can help reduce the frequency of harmful actions—it might be helpful in getting folks on the same page in terms of what a lower bound for acceptable behaviour in this context looks like.
For example, someone might not consider an particular action “sexual harassment”, but 80% of women on the receiving end might find it uncomfortable and would prefer it if it didn’t happen. In some of these cases it’s probably valuable for there to be a norm that such actions just shouldn’t happen. Agreeing to the text as stated doesn’t do much to reduce these “misunderstandings”. Giving some examples (while being clear that you can report incidents that don’t fit these examples) also mean that if someone then does [inappropriate action], that folks don’t really have the excuse of “sorry I didn’t think this was inappropriate” / “didn’t consider this sexual harassment, it was just a harmless joke”. It also has fairly little downside risk, because if there was some hyper-specific context where it was seen to be appropriate by the receiving party even if it fit an example given, they just simply won’t report it. I’m uncertain about this though, since I don’t have a clear sense of what the distribution of harm and cases look like.
Responses should be shaped by the wishes of the person who experienced the problem — people have different preferences about how much action they want us to take, whether they want us to act immediately or give them time to think over the options, etc.
Yeah, totally agree with this, hence “potential” action, though I think I wasn’t clear enough here.
I am interested in your thoughts whether data collection at EAGs have been effective or useful for capturing these kinds of incidents, how the community health team has responded, whether any of this is share-able in a deanonymised way? Also, does the community health team expect to continue sharing summaries similar to what you published in this appendix going forwards? I found this quite useful personally in getting a sense of how the community health team operates and think it’s somewhat useful for trust-building and accountability.
I am interested in your thoughts whether data collection at EAGs have been effective or useful for capturing these kinds of incidents, how the community health team has responded, whether any of this is share-able in a deanonymised way?
Learning about what kind of problems people have experienced has led us to changes like asking attendees not to use Swapcard for dating purposes.
does the community health team expect to continue sharing summaries similar to what you published in this appendix going forwards? I found this quite useful personally in getting a sense of how the community health team operates and think it’s somewhat useful for trust-building and accountability.
I’m glad you found it useful! Getting the right level of anonymity with that list was tricky, so I could imagine doing it at some interval but not every year.
There have been a few discussions recently around how to make EA a more welcoming and safer place for women. Some of these involve discussions around the appropriateness of nonprofessional motivations for swapcard / 1-1s (e.g. using swapcard to solicit romantic relationships, hitting on people at EAGs). The following includes suggestions from discussions with people interested in making EAGs a better space for women.[1]
Request:
Can we make it very explicit and unambiguous what the EAG + EAGx’s event policies are? (apologies if this is already listed somewhere).
Some other possible suggestions:[2]
Explicit policy, transparent criteria or examples of what would constitute a breach, and clear potential consequences of various severity of actions are made available up front.
A acknowledgement of these policies + consequences as a pre-requisite for attendance (e.g. a “I acknowledge and agree to follow CEA’s event policies” checkbox during application form)
An (optionally anonymous) place to submit complaints, including for immediate action if needed
The process should ideally allows those accused (if not anonymous) to present their perspective, though this might be deanonymising for the complainant, so this should be discussed with them.
Updates to complainants within a pre-specified timeframe
End of conference survey that explicitly asks about things like behaviour that makes people feel subjectively unwelcome, or experiences that make people think they were being solicited for a nonprofessional purpose. These can be stratified by gender, cause area, age, and experience within EA or number of EAG attendances for both complainants as well as potential perpetrators.
Summary statistics, as well as anonymised log of complaints and actions taken, are anonymised and published.
Less directly relevant / more tentative but may interact with the above:
-Clear alcohol policy during EAGs
-An official (but clearly non-endorsed) compilation of post-EAG socials that are open-invite. This serves the less professional + more social functions of EAGs for those who feel like this is an important element of EAG, and makes it easier for newcomers who wish to attend to know what might be happening instead of ad-hoc facebook groups / word of mouth / getting links to google docs from friends, while making it feel less exclusive. (Unsure about the value of this, though some previous EAGs have had slack channels within the official slack that served this purpose)
-Surveying attendees for what norms they’d prefer at EAGs (though this may be subject to selection bias)
Anecdotally this is a very important point of feedback for a subset of attendees, including on whether they feel like EA is the right community for them. Separately, I do think this is a low hanging fruit for the EA community (more tractable than trying to coordinate community group norms), as well as a very important place for the EA as a collective to walk the talk, as a community who supposedly unites under a shared goal of doing good better.
Apologies, haven’t put much thought into how much of the following would be actually good in practice, or looked into how much of this already exists. This is a list that covers some areas I think seem important on first principles (clear + transparent processes, accountability, and data collection to allow better decision making in future), and not based on research into existing best practices.
I agree that this is really important. When I started working at CEA in 2015, one of the main things my predecessor had been working on was developing anti-harassment practices for CEA’s conferences, and I continued her work. The conference materials from Geek Feminism were helpful to us in developing our practices.
The place where all EAG and EAGx attendees agree to the standards is the code of conduct, which must be acknowledged when registering for an event. The text on the registration form for the upcoming EAG Bay Area is:
At EA Global and social events associated with EA Global, you agree to:
Respect the boundaries of other participants.
Look out for one another and try to help if you can.
Adhere to national and local health and safety regulations, as well as any additional policies we institute for EA Global.
This is a professional learning and networking event. These behaviors don’t belong at EA Global or related events:
Unwanted sexual attention, or sexual harassment of any kind.
Using the event app to request meetings for romantic or sexual reasons.
Offensive, disruptive, or discriminatory actions or communication.
We understand that human interaction is complex. If you feel able, please give each other the benefit of explaining behavior you find unwelcome or offensive.
If you’re asked to stop a behavior that’s causing a problem for someone, we expect you to stop immediately.
By submitting this form, you confirm that you will adhere to this Code of Conduct, which applies at the conference and all related social events.
You can contact us at hello@eaglobal.org if you have any questions.
This text wasn’t on our website, but we’ve added it to our FAQ page now. Thanks for suggesting this! It’s also referenced in the attendee guides, for example this text from the EAG DC guide: “Harassment, bullying, or unwanted romantic/sexual attention is unacceptable at our events, and we encourage you to report any of this behavior to us.”
All our conferences have at least one community contact person, whose role is to be available for personal or interpersonal problems that come up. When a problem is raised during a conference, they’re there to deal with it as soon as possible. Sometimes attendees contact us after an event with something they’ve been mulling over.
I’ve often been one of the contact people. My sense is that pre-specified criteria for what constitutes something like “offensive actions” or “unwanted sexual attention” and what the response should be isn’t realistic or a good idea. A lot of factors play into what constitutes a problem — words, body language, setting (the career fair vs. an afterparty vs. a deserted street outside the venue at night), power and status differences between the people, etc. Responses should be shaped by the wishes of the person who experienced the problem — people have different preferences about how much action they want us to take, whether they want us to act immediately or give them time to think over the options, etc.
Besides the community contact people at events, attendees can also report problems anonymously on the event survey, or on the community health team’s anonymous contact form.
Thanks for the response and clarification!
This makes sense to me + and I agree RE: other factors that can change whether something is a problem or not. I think I was too certain in my wording of the original bullet point, and can see where it could be harmful if applied too broadly. I guess my prior here is that most people are not intentionally wanting to cause harm, but do so because of different expectations or communication norms or social abilities. If true, I wonder whether some clear examples that are generally seen to be controversially unwanted by those on the receiving end can help reduce the frequency of harmful actions—it might be helpful in getting folks on the same page in terms of what a lower bound for acceptable behaviour in this context looks like.
For example, someone might not consider an particular action “sexual harassment”, but 80% of women on the receiving end might find it uncomfortable and would prefer it if it didn’t happen. In some of these cases it’s probably valuable for there to be a norm that such actions just shouldn’t happen. Agreeing to the text as stated doesn’t do much to reduce these “misunderstandings”. Giving some examples (while being clear that you can report incidents that don’t fit these examples) also mean that if someone then does [inappropriate action], that folks don’t really have the excuse of “sorry I didn’t think this was inappropriate” / “didn’t consider this sexual harassment, it was just a harmless joke”. It also has fairly little downside risk, because if there was some hyper-specific context where it was seen to be appropriate by the receiving party even if it fit an example given, they just simply won’t report it. I’m uncertain about this though, since I don’t have a clear sense of what the distribution of harm and cases look like.
Yeah, totally agree with this, hence “potential” action, though I think I wasn’t clear enough here.
I am interested in your thoughts whether data collection at EAGs have been effective or useful for capturing these kinds of incidents, how the community health team has responded, whether any of this is share-able in a deanonymised way? Also, does the community health team expect to continue sharing summaries similar to what you published in this appendix going forwards? I found this quite useful personally in getting a sense of how the community health team operates and think it’s somewhat useful for trust-building and accountability.
Learning about what kind of problems people have experienced has led us to changes like asking attendees not to use Swapcard for dating purposes.
I’m glad you found it useful! Getting the right level of anonymity with that list was tricky, so I could imagine doing it at some interval but not every year.