I wasn’t sure myself about what has done in the past to improve diversity, so I checked the diversity and inclusion tag on the forum. This led me to a very thorough, very detailed post from March 2025 called “History of diversity efforts and trends in EA” by Julia Wise, who works at the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) as a community liaison. (That post is quite long, so you might want to look at the SummaryBot summary first and then check the parts of the article that interest you.)
I also know that there are some groups online like the Facebook group Women and non-binary people in Effective Altruism. Julia Wise’s post lists some others under “Organizational / program efforts”.
Beyond the groups Julia’s post lists, there might also be Discord servers, Slack teams, or other private or semi-private groups for people in EA of certain demographics. You’d have to look around and maybe ask around.
I’m bringing up these kind of groups both because a) I have to think they increase retention of people in EA because people in these demographics have a place to commiserate and support each other and b) a group like this might be a good place for you to inquire about this topic further.
Part of the difficulty with improving diversity in EA is EA’s connection to LessWrong and the San Francisco Bay Area rationalist community, which has an alarmingly high level of endorsement of, curiosity toward, or sympathy to far-right, alt-right, racist, anti-feminist, anti-trans, white nationalist, white supremacist, and/or authoritarian views.[1] It would be great if EA could just chop off this noxious community like a necrotic limb, alas, for now, it is part and parcel of the EA community. Improving diversity in EA will always be met with some very vocal resistance as long as the two communities remain entwined. I don’t know what to do about this, except either give up on EA or keep arguing with people about this.
My recommendation is if you care about diversity and want to be involved in EA, it might be better to focus on an EA group local to you or some other corner of the EA movement where a significant majority of the people do care about diversity and would support diversity initiatives. In public online spaces related to EA like the EA Forum, diversity and diversity initiatives are a contested topic that not everyone agrees is good. Similarly, the online groups that focus on certain demographics in EA might be a nice experience for that reason.
In terms of effective altruism conferences like EA Global (EAG) or the various EAGx conferences, I don’t know what the atmosphere around diversity is like. I also don’t know how diversity is handled at the various major EA organizations like the Centre for Effective Altruism, 80,000 Hours, Giving What We Can, or EA Funds.
I think different pockets of the EA movement in different places or focusing on different cause areas or involving different networks of people can sometimes have quite different atmospheres or subcultures (for lack of a better word), so I don’t want to give you the impression that all of EA is the same with respect to diversity.
See this blog post by the philosopher David Thorstad for an overview/introduction. I also think this EA Forum post by a pseudonymous participant in several Bay Area rationalist events in 2024 encapsulates some of the very serious problems with that community.
I wasn’t sure myself about what has done in the past to improve diversity, so I checked the diversity and inclusion tag on the forum. This led me to a very thorough, very detailed post from March 2025 called “History of diversity efforts and trends in EA” by Julia Wise, who works at the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) as a community liaison. (That post is quite long, so you might want to look at the SummaryBot summary first and then check the parts of the article that interest you.)
I also know that there are some groups online like the Facebook group Women and non-binary people in Effective Altruism. Julia Wise’s post lists some others under “Organizational / program efforts”.
Beyond the groups Julia’s post lists, there might also be Discord servers, Slack teams, or other private or semi-private groups for people in EA of certain demographics. You’d have to look around and maybe ask around.
I’m bringing up these kind of groups both because a) I have to think they increase retention of people in EA because people in these demographics have a place to commiserate and support each other and b) a group like this might be a good place for you to inquire about this topic further.
Part of the difficulty with improving diversity in EA is EA’s connection to LessWrong and the San Francisco Bay Area rationalist community, which has an alarmingly high level of endorsement of, curiosity toward, or sympathy to far-right, alt-right, racist, anti-feminist, anti-trans, white nationalist, white supremacist, and/or authoritarian views.[1] It would be great if EA could just chop off this noxious community like a necrotic limb, alas, for now, it is part and parcel of the EA community. Improving diversity in EA will always be met with some very vocal resistance as long as the two communities remain entwined. I don’t know what to do about this, except either give up on EA or keep arguing with people about this.
My recommendation is if you care about diversity and want to be involved in EA, it might be better to focus on an EA group local to you or some other corner of the EA movement where a significant majority of the people do care about diversity and would support diversity initiatives. In public online spaces related to EA like the EA Forum, diversity and diversity initiatives are a contested topic that not everyone agrees is good. Similarly, the online groups that focus on certain demographics in EA might be a nice experience for that reason.
In terms of effective altruism conferences like EA Global (EAG) or the various EAGx conferences, I don’t know what the atmosphere around diversity is like. I also don’t know how diversity is handled at the various major EA organizations like the Centre for Effective Altruism, 80,000 Hours, Giving What We Can, or EA Funds.
I think different pockets of the EA movement in different places or focusing on different cause areas or involving different networks of people can sometimes have quite different atmospheres or subcultures (for lack of a better word), so I don’t want to give you the impression that all of EA is the same with respect to diversity.
See this blog post by the philosopher David Thorstad for an overview/introduction. I also think this EA Forum post by a pseudonymous participant in several Bay Area rationalist events in 2024 encapsulates some of the very serious problems with that community.