As the fallout of the FSFE stalking scandal continues, we are publishing below the leaked FSFE diversity strategy.
Here are the highlights we identified:
For the FSFE front page we asked women to provide quotes with picture: This worked for Amaelle. Other female contributors were also initially interested in providing a quote, but other constrains prevented them from doing so.
What is the real reason women don't want their name and picture on the FSFE web site?
At our events we encourage female speakers, as well as new speakers, and from different countries (e.g. LLW, but also at the summit).
FSFE's biggest event is LLW but it is never advertised. The registration process and the Call for Papers are hidden from the former Fellows and the Supporters. Women will not participate in other Free Software events as long as the biggest events, like LLW, are hidden in the shadows.
For internships we meanwhile give preference to women.
Women employed as interns, men employed on permanent contracts. As the recent court case demonstrates, all women on permanent contracts were sacked for talking about equality. What Matthias Kirschner describes is analogous to the Untermensch concept from the Third Reich. This isn't the first time we find Kirschner's conduct is close to that of the Third Reich.
we also encourage female interns to stay active in the FSFE after their internships:
- We hired Polina (resigned after FSFE/LLW Conflict of Interest scandal) after her internship
- Nikos is currently talking with Olga about her becoming the Greek deputy coordinator.
- With Lucile we have regular contact and invite her to meetings (she has very little time).
- We work a lot with Eszter, who is now assistent of Julia Reda, but it might be difficult to include her further at the moment.
- Lusy is at the moment organising a Free Software event and coordinating with Matthias.
Why would Olga Gkotsopoulou, a woman from Greece, want to continue working for Free after her paid German internship ends? Why would a woman in Greece want to send money to a misogynist in Berlin? What will this Greek money be used for, hiring more female interns in Kirschner's cramped little office?
Kirschner appears to be delusional about his obligation to pay people. An internship is a contract that ensures the woman can never acquire maternity rights, the contract always finishes before they can become pregnant. Women resent this.
### In Progress
- Finish and implement Code of Conduct:
- Continue with the CoC, implement it, also against some critism (Erik worked on it with Heiki, but as it should be valid for the whole organisation so we said it would be good that we do not have several CoCs in the FSFE but try to merge it with the LLW CoC).
- help our groups to enforce it with a training about that topic next year (for the LLW Polina worked on a detailed guide what to keep in mind about that)
This was the only definite action from the strategy, another Code of Conduct. The way Kirschner went to this woman's home demonstrates the reality of the Code of Conduct: leaders of open source organizations see themselves as God, they can do whatever they want and only apply their "enforcement" venom to their political rivals. ⬆
Subject: Re: diversity and expanding the GA
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 10:51:58 +0000
From: Matthias Kirschner <mk@fsfe.org>
To: ga@fsfeurope.org
Dear GA members,
thank you all for raising your points in this thread. As Hugo pointed out we repeatedly had that discussion, and also worked on some points. Still there were some new ideas in the thread and from the Council we suggest a few action items to make further progress. But first, so that everybody is on the same page, some examples of existing activities on that topic.
## Some examples of what we already do/did
- When we have pictures on our website we try to have equal wo/man on them. For example have a look at https://fsfe.org/campaigns/ilovefs/whylovefs/gallery.en.html (this year we had some additions, before IIRC the ratio was better).
- For the FSFE front page we asked women to provide quotes with picture: This worked for Amaelle. Other female contributors were also initially interested in providing a quote, but other constrains prevented them from doing so.
- At our events we encourage female speakers, as well as new speakers, and from different countries (e.g. LLW, but also at the summit). Although we have the same problem most conferences have, that is is really difficult to achieve that.
- For the Legal Network council we started by picking the same ratio with men as with women.
- For internships we meanwhile give preference to women. One reason is also because becoming intern is also increasing the chance to become an employment in the Free Software area. (https://fsfe.org/contribute/internship.en.html says "We want more women to be involved in Free Software. That's why we will give preference to applications from suitably qualified female candidates.")
- As with males we also encourage female interns to stay active in the FSFE after their internships:
- We hired Polina (resigned after FSFE/LLW Conflict of Interest scandal) after her internship
- Nikos is currently talking with Olga about her becoming the Greek deputy coordinator.
- With Lucile we have regular contact and invite her to meetings (she has very little time).
- We work a lot with Eszter, who is now assistent of Julia Reda, but it might be difficult to include her further at the moment.
- Lusy is at the moment organising a Free Software event and coordinating with Matthias.
- Staff was following-up with proposals from the past. For example Patrick Ohnewein before proposed Sonia Montegiove. Matthias had several talks with her and invited her to the FSFE summit. The problem is that she is quite shy when speaking English.
- This year we had a moderations workshop for our staff. Before it we clarified with the trainer that one of our goals is to enable our staff running more inclusive meetings. The workshop was documented in the wiki https://wiki.fsfe.org/Internal/Moderation (some permission problem at the moment, hope it is soon fixed).
## Next Steps
### In Progress
- Finish and implement Code of Conduct:
- Continue with the CoC, implement it, also against some critism (Erik worked on it with Heiki, but as it should be valid for the whole organisation so we said it would be good that we do not have several CoCs in the FSFE but try to merge it with the LLW CoC).
- help our groups to enforce it with a training about that topic next year (for the LLW Polina worked on a detailed guide what to keep in mind about that).
### Possible actions
- Discussion with Ulrike about the topic. She studied gender studies and is very interested in the topic) about the topic. Together with her identify strategies for more diversity inside the FSFE community and the GA, by
- having a budget for counselling on diversity (as several people pointed out, just because someone is a women in IT, does not know they know about diversity).
- have a time budget for Ulrike to help on this issue next year.
- As some hesitate to just add women to the GA without first being involved in other areas, make it a priority to support already active or interested females (or other under represented groups). * This could include that we encourage them to join us in teams, and mentor them, or to invite them to events so we can meet them (could also include priority for travel funding in case we have to choose).
- GA participation:
- You might have realised that all our male staffers are GA members, but none of our female staffers is. That is bad. We should encourage Polina and Ulrike to think about joining, too.
- Depending on the outcome of the FSFE2020 discussion: if we enlarge the council (as the FSFE board) introduce a quote there (as Daniel proposed to have a second VP position, with a requirement that at least one of the VP positions must not be male.)
- Depending on the Italian GA member's feedback, we could invite her as a guest to the next GA, or if they think it would be a good idea we can ask her to first become another coordinator for Italy as a first step.
- https://fsfe.org/contribute/internship.en.html starts with a quote by a former male and female interns. But we should update one of the quotes by Erik or Hugo on that page with former quotes.
- Make sure we have balanced quotes by women on our website / as well as the front page. E.g. https://fsfe.org/campaigns/ilovefs/whylovefs/whylovefs.en.html (either get more or think about removing this page for next years in the campaign)
Best Regards,
Matthias