extending my feedback about the diversity section, with 2 research + my personal notes.
1.) “The Gendered Geography of Contributions to OpenStreetMap: Complexities in Self-Focus Bias”
( May 2019 ) The Gendered Geography of Contributions to OpenStreetMap: Complexities in Self-Focus Bias
Practical Implications
Recruiting Male Contributors as Allies. Existing research has situated male and female OSM editors in a position in which we might expect a misalignment between their interest space. If this were true, a solution to any gender-based content disparity might be easy: attract more female editors. As our results show - this simply is not the case. Instead, our findings reveal that male users are cognizant of at least some of the feminized spaces, and they actively map those facilities. This contradicts the way many prior researchers have been formulating thoughts and discussion of potential improvements to the amount and quality of feminized spaces in OSM [51, 65, 68, 92]. In our dataset, female editors tended to map feminized places to a lesser extent than their male counterparts. As these spaces characterize important facilities for feminine health and nurturing of others, proper representation is necessary. However, our results point out that a straightforward solution like increasing female participation may not ensure increased representation of feminized spaces. We caution that our results should not be interpreted in a way that discourages higher levels of female participation. Rather we need to think critically about ways to increase coverage of under-represented facilities on OSM. One possible approach is the recruitment of male editors as “allies” along with more female participants and informing all editors of the state of the repository. Another solution may be to take the ”SuggestBot” approach [25] and design a content recommendation system that will seek contributors based on location, interests, skills, etc. For example, a local person who is probably aware of nearby childcare centers or maternity clinics may be asked to map those places irrespective of their gender.
2.) "Engaging Men in Women’s Empowerment”
in the research: “Seeing the World Through Maps: An Inclusive and Youth-Oriented Approach” Seeing the World Through Maps: An Inclusive and Youth-Oriented Approach | SpringerLink ( 2022 November )
Keywords : Gender; Equality; Women; Nepal ; Everywhere She Maps ; YouthMappers
“I have learned many things about Gender Equality and Equity. What allures me is “Engaging Men in Women’s Empowerment” which is a new thing to me. When I completed the training, I was fascinated by thinking about the dimension of the idea. If you want to empower women, you need to engage men in this campaign as women and men are essential parts of society.”
3.) Personal note:
As a man, it feels good to be acknowledged that we too need to be part of the solution. I very much appreciate the proposed approach: “Engaging Men in Women’s Empowerment”.
This method can likely be used in other areas. It encourages those in privileged positions to help support and boost those with less power. An example of this could be “Encouraging Active Involvement of Westerners in Strengthening the Global South”
Growing up behind the Iron Curtain as an Eastern European, I was part of a peculiar social experiment. As a result, I tend to be more sensitive towards solutions that sound good in theory, but do not work in practice, compared to those from different cultural backgrounds. Because of this, I believe we should avoid zero-sum thinking and solutions, where someone always loses.
We should also steer clear of reverse discrimination as a tool to disrupt the perceived status quo.
In essence, some form of safeguard is needed to ensure that the OSMF Diversity Statement is not weaponized to exclude other groups. The Diversity Statement should be a framework for inclusion and mutual respect, rather than a tool for exclusion.