On 7 June 2014 18:40, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
On 7 June 2014 13:27, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote: Hold on....so now you are saying that someone employed by a WMF chapter or the WMF itself will never be allowed to be considered anything other than an employee? Fae, if they're paying their own way, they are there as volunteers, not employees. If they have not been directed to attend by their employer, they are volunteers. Not everyone does everything for work-related purposes, and a very significant proportion of Wikimedians who work for a chapter or the WMF also make volunteer contributions in many ways to WMF projects. This is a good thing, and shouldn't result in them being slammed for attending Wikimedia-related events on their own time spending their own money, as the nature of the question implies. If they didn't register as "employee of Chapter xx" or "employee of WMF", and their employer hasn't paid for their registration, there is absolutely no reason for them to be considered "employees" during their attendance.
Being an employee or contractor for the Foundation or a Chapter is not a crime, nor something that needs to be a shameful secret. You appear determined to parody my question.
Simply asking for numbers of unpaid volunteers taking part and numbers of women taking part, without numbers being biased by however many Foundation or Chapter employees and contractors attend (a greater proportion of whom are women compared to the general unpaid volunteer population) is a perfectly good question, and I should be free to ask it without endless bad faith accusations and slurs.
I do not believe that gender is a mandatory question on any registrations for any WMF projects, and I question whether or not it's an appropriate one unless there is some specific reason to ask (e.g., accommodation arrangements). Therefore, there is no accurate method to assess the number of women who attended.
The Wikimedia movement is perceived both inside and out as having a problem attracting and retaining women volunteers, especially *unpaid* women volunteers.
If leading members of our movement are going to adamantly refuse to even count the numbers of women participating at events and so fail to openly and transparently report the statistics, then I guess the only defence we have when criticised by journalists is to close our eyes and plug our ears until they go away.
To all feminists reading this, do you want to be counted or not?
The answer to how many women attended this conference officially appears to be "we don't know, we don't want to know, we will never tell you."
Fae