Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Reports/Summary of Movement Conversations 2020/Women and LGBT+
The numbers[edit]
About 20 people engaged through channels dedicated to women or LGBT+ communities; such as on Telegram channels or during the 2 online meet-ups that were organized.
General feelings[edit]
It was expressed that the strategy recommendations are hard to interpret and understand. In the Women's group, the discussion stated that even native english speakers are having difficulties understanding the language. There was strong support for many initiatives, but a feeling that women and LGBT issues were not tackled explicitly enough.
Areas of support[edit]
Create Cultural Change for Inclusive Communities
There was support to elaborate on the indicators that can measure the impact of gender gap and analyze the safety of the movement’s environment. There was support for the Movement charter.
Provide for Safety and Security
Overall support for the recommendation because there is currently no real plan in place that can support people. The recommendation would create ways of accessing information about safety.
Ensure Equity in Decision-making
Overall there was support for this recommendation, as equal representation of voices of movement is required for inclusion of diversity in any movement charter or global governance body model.
Foster and Develop Distributed Leadership
There was strong support for this recommendation on grounds it can potentially create an inclusive environment and a safe culture for different groups of communities to have opportunities of leadership. The protection of people needs to be prioritized.
Prioritize Topics for Impact
Strong support on grounds that it would be helpful to have access to sources for women for different language groups. With better sources, there would be less problems keeping the content on-Wiki about a particular topic concerning marginalized groups.
Areas of opposition or concern[edit]
There was an impression that the gender gap was not incorporated explicitly in the strategy document. There were also doubts about how a global governance body would be implemented and how it would affect affiliate governance.
Suggestions for improvement[edit]
Promote Sustainability and Resilience
The words needed are prompt, “harassment issues will be tackled” but it is not clearly expressed.
Create Cultural Change for Inclusive Communities
The document should better state that it will allow adaptation to various cultural contexts. The Gender gap should be mentioned explicitly.
Provide for Safety and Security
There should be more clarity about how to enforce the safety standards and protocols for users facing real life threats and harassment, especially on virtual and physical level that affect their life outside and within Wikimedia.
External factors and how they impact and affect wikimedia volunteers need to be worked on. Harassment and safety protocols for emergency response need to be expressed more.
Ensure Equity in Decision-making
More communication is needed between affiliates, the Foundation and the communities for the actual implementation of this recommendation.
Points to clarify[edit]
Create Cultural Change for Inclusive Communities
It was expressed that there are only vague mentions of 'diversity', it's not clear why this has been the approach taken with no noticeable visibility of LGBT+ stakeholders.
Safety and security
More clarity is needed on how to enforce such a Code of Conduct, especially providing for protection and safety from external factors.
Ensure Equity in Decision-making
There was hesitation on grounds that the actual existing entities may be replaced by global governance bodies and there would be no legal accountability and power centralization in dissemination of funds and opportunities.
There is clarification needed on representation of communities in a regional hubs model. There was a question about self governance and how diversity and inclusion of marginalized community members will be ensured.