I wanted to describe my personal experience in case it shifts anyone like me towards applying. I was accepted, received travel support, and went to EAG London last month.
Initially, I considered the likelihood that I would be accepted and be able to go very low: I didn’t think I was involved enough in EA and I didn’t think it made sense for me to receive travel support to go as I live very far from London. I also didn’t think that I ‘deserved’ to go: I reasoned that I shouldn’t take a spot from someone more engaged in EA or could provide more value to other attendees. I probably wouldn’t have applied if not for having a personal connection with someone else who applied.
Nearly every interaction I had at the conference was positive. Many people I spoke to were happy to share about their area even if I had little prior understanding, and I was surprised to find I had ideas and perspectives that were unique/might not have surfaced in conversation had I not been there.
As a young person, I have never felt more respected as a full person and equal with meaningful ideas to contribute. EAG is intense—it can be near constant interaction with a lot of people, focused on the most important problems in the world. But going to EAG made me feel like a ‘part of’ EA, and gave me a lot more confidence to make decisions, to try things, to reach out to people.
If you’re like me and concerned about not being qualified or not having done enough, let the organisers judge, and consider the possibility that EAG might give you the ability to do more later.
Thanks for writing this post! I think promoting diversity in EA is incredibly important and I appreciate your contribution to it.
However, I get a feeling here that you’ve started with an underlying assumption that “EA should cater to women”, which I don’t see the argument for. Certainly, if there’s a stark lack of women throughout EA, I’d feel that there’s a problem that needs to be specifically addressed—but I don’t think this is the case.
You present information about the academic fields that correlate with participation in EA, and note that there’s a gender disparity that matches the one we seem to observe in EA. To me, this seems like evidence that there isn’t a problem within EA, but a result of broader, more complicated dynamics elsewhere. On the other hand, the other demographic data you present on other minorities seems like a more significant issue.
For instance, the rest of the 80k article you cite is clear about the fact that the framework isn’t applicable to everyone, and I think the choice of whether to have children is just one of many possible reasons the framework might not strictly apply to a person. And while demographic data shows that the work of having children affects women disproportionately, non-women who intend to parent would also need to consider the same unanswered questions.
Because of these dynamics, I don’t think that the claim you’ve made here, that more resources should be directed in a way that addresses the gender disparity, is substantiated.
I’m curious to hear from where you’ve gotten the sense that the EA community uses a ‘male-default position’ - I’ve never felt this.
(As a side note, if you haven’t heard of them, there’s magnifymentoring—previously WANBAM)