[CivicAccess-discuss] Scassa review of the OGP IRM report blogpost

[Tracey P. Lauriault]

russel,

It is important that if there are competent females available for
technology panels they should be sought after and there should be some sort
of gender balance.  At the moment things technology are heavily stacked
with men and that discourages female participation, it also doe not give
women a voice, and it says that techology is not for girls.  The google
hangouts were terrible, and some of the guys they had on them were gamers
who did not even have subject matter expertise. the minister was thus
saying that his work is about boy and men things, even if the men do not
even have the prerequisite knowledge, it is ok cuz their guys,  and not
about things women care about, which you know is absolutely not the case.

The push back with commercials for girls about pink games or the lack of
girl characters in leggo and cool science and make adds for girls is part
of that.  girls and women in the male dominated gaming community are also
under attack.  so for a whole, we need to support and sponsor and seek out
women capable of doing good work in this space, and not only have bro
spaces.

If we have conferences, then we can aim to seek out competent and
knowledgeable females.

On Thursday, February 6, 2014, Russell McOrmond <russell at c11.ca> wrote:

>
> A few quick thoughts..
>
> Giving ePetitions a voice in tandem with paper isn't a big change, other
> than potentially as a way to engage younger demographics with this type of
> method of mentioning an issue to government.   That is a great thing.
>
> As someone who has coordinated petitions my experience has been that age
> is a larger divider than gender when trying to leverageing  paper petitions
> as a "toe in the door" to more active participation in an issue.   This is
> always how petitions should be seen: toe in the door.  While a form-letter
> has to be tabled, there has never been a requirement for a parliamentary
> petition to actually be "responded" to in any meaningful way.   The
> petitions I've coordinated had government replies that simply repeated the
> policies we were petitioning against, without acknowledging an
> understanding of the issues we were presenting.
>
> While it is true it would be better for more participation in democracy,
> lets not for a moment confuse a small change in how petitions can be
> presented as having much of an impact one way or the other on that larger
> issue.  I also don't think lack of participation is a failure of government
> as much as it is a failure of citizenry, so don't think changes in
> government processes around petitions/consultations/etc  will make much of
> a difference.  Now, if we want to move away from parliamentary processes to
> educational policy....
>
> I know it isn't politically correct to say this, but I have never believed
> in artificial external manipulation of demographics.   If a given issue
> happens to be dominated by a gender (male or female -- and I've seen both),
> or dominated by an age, or dominated by a racial background, I don't
> consider it helpful to artificially "balance" things.  I believe it causes
> the opposite to what people think it does: people who are otherwise not as
> strongly motivated by an issue being given a larger podium than they would
> otherwise gain causes harm to whatever the issue happens to be. Ensuring
> equal opportunity for participation is not the same as artificially
> mandating demographics.
>


-- 
Tracey P. Lauriault
http://traceyplauriault.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/moving-to-ireland/
https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault
http://datalibre.ca/
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