Yes it does reflect a gender binary, because I had absolutely no way to
collect information about gender identity by scraping websites for
information. In the future, organizers could ask people to volunteer
information, which they might happily do at the LGBTQ dance camp, but maybe
not so easily at a bluegrass camp in the south or midwest banjo camp. I
don¹t know about the legalities, but certainly the ethics of asking for that
information can get really complicated really fast.
I definitely don¹t want to exclude to exclude non-binary people, I just
don¹t think it¹s helpful to add a column that can¹t be filled until there is
a reliable way to collect the information to fill it. (Also labeling it
³other² felt super awkward.) So for purposes of this project, I asked for
total # of staff people with counts for men and women, and if those separate
counts don¹t add up to 100%, then that still gives us information about that
camp staff demographic.
I know this isn¹t perfect and I wish I had the resources to make it so. I
also encourage anyone with an interest in a specific demographic to start
collecting data - maybe we can join the information together!
Sarah (a cis-het female who has been on staff at Lavender Country Dance
weekend and gets her best great advice on Queer Stuff from her transgender
gay son)
From: Organizers
<organizers-bounces+ladysmyth=rcn.com(a)lists.sharedweight.net> on behalf of
"Winston, Alan P. via Organizers" <organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net>
Reply-To: "Winston, Alan P." <winston(a)slac.stanford.edu>
Date: Thursday, October 10, 2019 at 4:55 PM
To: "organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net"
<organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net>
Subject: Re: [Organizers] Two new resources !
I appreciate the effort here. I note, though, that your spreadsheet assumes
a gender binary. (A significant part of the "larks and robins" drive is to
remove the necessity of a gender binary.) At the very least, it would be
good to have a column for "Other" or "Non-binary".
(It would be somewhat useful but intrusive and difficult to maintain
gender-presentation and gender-identification stats.)
-- Alan (a cis-het male who's been on staff at Queer Contra weekend)
On 10/10/2019 12:42 PM, Sarah Gowan via Organizers wrote:
Announcing that two brand new resources that could be
really helpful to
organizers of music and dance camps, festivals and events are in the first
week of their development.
womenfolk spreadsheet
The first actually started in 2015 when I compiled a small set of information
on instructor gender balance at camps. All wanted to see was the ratio of men
to women instructors and musicians at a range of camps. I plopped them into a
simple spreadsheet and exported the results (see image below.) My initial
sample yielded results from good to abysmal, but only included one year for
each even, so didn¹t account for any anomalies Responses from people I showed
it to were decidedly lukewarm, so I put it away for a couple of years. But
this week another idea was put out that dovetailed nicely with my little
spreadsheet, so I hauled it out of the mothballs and made it available online.
As it works now, I and a volunteer or two search out info from websites and
put it in manually. However my current thinking is that it would be amazing if
organizations would self-audit and either send me the results or add them
directly to the spreadsheets. I just got my first self-entered stats from
Crispin at CDSS (Thank you!) and would love to get more. While it¹s easy to
think of this as shaming to get organizations to do better, I would rather it
was used to as a tool to see how organizations are doing better over time, or
to tap the organizations who are doing well for more information on how they
get such great results. It could also open up a larger conversation on why
hiring for gender equality may not always be the ultimate goal and the other
kinds of hiring considerations people are juggling.
A couple of things to know:
For now I¹m not collecting information on ethnicity for this sheet.
If gender identity is unknown we list total staff members and only categorize
the ones that are clearly one gender or the other as they choose to identify.
Any time we aren¹t sure, or a staff member has clearly indicated they don¹t
want to be counted, we leave them out of the category counts. That means we
won¹t always add up to 100%, but that also gives us important information
about how gender identity could be influencing (or not influencing) hiring
practices. I want to keep it simple without leaving anyone out!
We are not including unpaid staff or ³service staff² (like child care
providers, cooks etc.). We really want to get a sense of the way different
camps and weekends think about hiring music and dance instructors and
performers specifically.
The current document is here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MjDRL3ZkHfJAsyk1p-QFTPiqVsFtiqZKEMx…
MEqw0/edit?usp=sharing
I left the 2015/16 info attached to it so you can see what results I came up
with then.
If you want to enter your info, shoot me an email and I will add you in.
ssgowan(a)gmail.com
The second even more super-exciting resource is being spearheaded by A¹yen
Tran from Brooklyn.
Women/Black/Indigenous/non-white/LGBTQIA Music Instructor Nominee Directory
A form to nominate excellent banjo, fiddle, guitar, bass, mandolin, uke,
vocal, music history and other musical teachers. This form aims to collect
nominees who can be referred as music teachers with the goal of increasing
representation for women, people of color and gender diversity in music camps
and other musical learning opportunities. This form was created on Oct 8, 2019
by A'yen Tran with the intention of making it publicly available, particularly
to music camp directors. Please feel free to self-nominate!
This will be an incredible resource for organizers to find underrepresented
performers and teachers and will also be a great way for organizers to share
the wealth around. Whether you know instructors who should be on this list, or
want to hire more underrepresented teachers, I encourage you to take a look at
both this one and the womenfolk spreadsheet and participate, if you can.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScMhZzZpzfbMkTVqSUHyFJ5YgOxxI6-EH8…
ynk8hUsNV4qg/viewform
Thanks,
Sarah Gowan
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