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

[Tracey P. Lauriault]

http://boingboing.net/2014/02/02/seven-year-old-girl-tells-lego.html

On Thursday, February 6, 2014, Tracey P. Lauriault <tlauriau at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','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/
>
>

-- 
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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