On 20 April 2011 16:11, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly(a)pobox.com> wrote:
On 20/04/2011 13:06, steve virgin wrote:
PS: I am white and middle aged so am guilty as
charged!!!
So far so good. Here is a list....
1) Gender
2) Ethnicity
3) Age
4) Religion
5) Disability
6) Sexual orientation
Before coming up with our own list of areas of concern, the Equalities
Act sets out[0] nine "protected characteristics" that are worth
considering for scope:
1. age;
2. disability;
3. gender reassignment;
4. marriage and civil partnership;
5. pregnancy and maternity;
6. race;
7. religion or belief;
8. sex;
9. sexual orientation.
Stereotypically, we[1] are unbalanced in all of these to some extent.
We are slightly non-representative in 9 and to an extent 3[2],
somewhat non-representative in 1, 2, 4 (mostly as a consequence of 1
and 8), 6 and 7, and hideously non-representative in 8 (and thus 5). I
think any focus should clearly be on 8 (and 4 and 5, to the limited
extent that it's helpful to the community), but also fixing the other
non-representative issues too.
There was also the secondary characteristic of socio-economic status
that was considered but didn't make the Act which is worth considering
for our purposes. On a global scale, the Foundation's push towards the
Global South touches on many of these points as well as this tenth
dimension.
[0] -
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/4
[1] - by "we" I mean Wikimedia in the Anglosphere
[2] - over-representation against wider population
J.
--
James D. Forrester
jdforrester(a)wikimedia.org | jdforrester(a)gmail.com
[[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]