Inclusion and diversity at Makerspace

#1

I don’t want to exacerbate trolling behaviours on this platform but I would be interested in reaching to female members here.

I feel South London Maker Space is biased towards a male based audience and needs. I feel there is little dialogue between different groups.
I like sewing but it doesn’t mean the activity should assigned or exclusively associated with the feminine.
Do you want people to actually work in the space? Do you only want to cater the needs of limited segment of society?
What about outreach programs, welcoming schools, elderlies?

Please, be the new trustee a woman, Sarah?

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#2

Previous discussion on this topic:

https://discourse.southlondonmakerspace.org/t/governance-and-inclusivity/1021

We don’t collect demographic data for the members so it’s hard to gauge, but our Facebook followers are split 56% male and 41% female (no explanation given for the other 3%)

#3

I think you raise a really important topic at a great time going into the governance process, and now that construction is ending this month we’ve got time to focus on nurturing our community a little.

I think it is important to remember that diversity is more than just about gender which is under represented in the space, there is also age and under represented minorities such as the tiny number of BAME members, almost no openly LGBTQ+, or members with disabilities.

Stats

@tomnewsom is right we don’t track any personal information about gender so it is impossible to pull accurate numbers on how people identify their gender, but just to give you an idea just running quickly through the members list, knowing most of the members/using their name to tally gender, we have 19 members who are probably female.

We currently have 112 active, paying members thats just under 17% of the membership who might be female.

Gendered making activity

Personally I think your suggestion that textiles (sewing) is a gendered activity within Makerspace is debatable, there was a high percentage men at the cushion making workshop, and a number of male members, including myself have used the textiles facilities, but I agree we shouldn’t push on this front.

Certainly not, however I am not clear what you are implying here.

The activities we’ve decided to cater for are based on the membership we had in September. The reality is space is very limited and although people have asked for metal working, you’ve mentioned the film cutting machine and others have other ideas, we cannot cater for everything, and took a popular vote on preferred activities at the time.

Equally if activities are to be treated as un-gendered then popular vote is probably the best way to determine what members want.

Outreach

The reality a lot of this is time, money and space, even saying it makes me feel uncomfortable because it shouldn’t be a barrier to outreach but its the truth of why we don’t do a great amount of outreach.

I wonder if the best way to improve diversity in general, and certainly gender diversity is to reach out more. We don’t have the perfect environment, but I think a more equal representation of women will help change the culture and that should in turn help with the other areas where diversity is poor also.

Female trustee

Please read the Directors Meeting Notes, we are going to review the entire governance process, the title trustee has been removed, in the unlikely event we don’t reach a conclusion over the summer at least one new director will be appointed, this will be by application, with a process of selection yet to be decided, Sarah and any other member will be welcome to apply, although I agree it would be nice to see more diversity in the board.

Gender will should not be a component in deciding someones suitability for being a director in any case, by that token the trustees/directors are getting less diverse because I am leaving.

#4

5 posts were split to a new topic: What is trolling?

#5

Bump, would be nice to hear more voices on this.

#6

It’s interesting that 41% of Facebook followers are female but only 17% of members are. That suggests it’s not lack of interest that’s behind the unbalanced numbers, but something else.

#7

Did you count them? (cos I’m about to but don’t want to waste my time!)

#8

No that figure was from @unknowndomain 's count / estimate in June. I’d be interested to know what it is now.

#9

Also interesting to look at proportion of female membership that actually uses the space. It seems higher than this?

#10

21 / 142 female by my estimates 14.7% based on assuming gender from first name.

Makerspace does poorly on all fronts when it comes to diversity:

  • Ethnicity
    London is about 60% White (British or Other)*
  • Gender
    Normally 50-51% female / 49-50% male
  • Sexual orientation
    10-11% LGB although this is hard to measure in Makerspace as people don’t always openly share this information.
  • Disability
    Couldn’t find hard numbers on this because disability is a broad term.
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#11

As Tom had said earlier, as a volunteer run organisation we can look at the impediment to taking part that people experience. We don’t have resources for further outreach than that. At this point in our development, at least.

Dyslexia is covered under the Equality act. Anecdotally we have a very high proportion of dyslexic members.

My point before is that it appears that although female membership is low, we have a higher percentage of female memebrs actually using the space than the stats suggest. But it’s not something we measure at the moment.

#12

That would be my perception too about female membership activity.

I think members also have to look at community attitude, as I’ve said before there are conversations that take place in the realm of lad talk that make it less welcoming for people other than hetrosexual men.

Additionally several of our female members have repeatedly noted the mess and hygiene of the space as an issue for them.

I’ve also heard people say they like the space for it’s design aesthetic while other members have critiqued it as either a waste of time/money or making it feel (effectively) less man cave. The reason for this approach was feedback from the successes of other spaces including Maklab.

I also think it’s a lazy attitude to say Makerspace don’t have the resources to do any outreach at all. If it is important you make the effort, taking leaflets and posters round to community spaces relevant to outreach groups is easy.

There are ideas I’ve heard when people have been discussing this matter at various events like OWL, Maker Faire, Maker Assembly, etc…

  • Women
  • There are groups like stitch and bitch which never got followed up on, someone could attend and tell them about it.
  • There are mothers coffee mornings, members could host one, or at least take some leaflets
  • Black community
  • There are several local afro hairdressers/barbers locally that are also a community hub that could be approached.
  • Older members
  • Follow up with U3A

I don’t think it would be that difficult to work on this, but it’s got to be recognised as an issue and seen as a priority which it isn’t right now because Makerspace doesn’t need more members, and don’t have trouble recruiting, and the members that already exist aren’t aware of a problem.

All I am saying is I’ve heard it said over and over at spaces with poor diversity that either they don’t have the resources, or they don’t know what to do.

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#13

Last time I visited there was one male adult, one minor accompanied by one female adult and one disabled person. I think that is fairly diverse.

#14

Thats not exactly representative of all the time though, is it?

And actually it is in no way representative of our membership or active users of the space, the majority of whom are still mainly white, mainly able bodided, mainly male, mainly hetrosexual, mainly middle class.

In other words one of the most privileged groups are the most active and make up the majority of our membership, that is a signifier that we’ve got to work with less privileged groups.

#15

I am not there all the time so would not be able to tell.

Also curious to see where you get the data for your membership profiling? I myself didn’t disclose anything, apart from gender.

#16

We don’t collect data so it has to be based on observations/estimation.

The gender balance is somewhat easier to work, per the numbers above it says assuming gender from first name, the exceptions being where I know for example Jem or Jesse are male members with traditionally female gendered names.

However being as active as I was and knowing a large percentage of the members…

I am not aware of any members with physical mobility issues, the gentleman you met I believe was a visitor, although I am not 100% on that, other disabilities are hard to classify, technically I have a disability but I don’t think of it like that.

Ethnicity is a hard one without asking people to disclose, but I think it’s relatively easy to tell it’s pretty undiverse at Makerspace considering our local community is very diverse.

Similarly you can only know someone’s sexual orientation if they’ve disclosed that with you, I’m only aware of two other LGB members.

Basically we’ll never know exact numbers without collecting this sensitive information, but considering we do nothing at present in terms of outreach and people have and do complain about aspects of our space and community from these groups about things that research has shown are key things to change to facilitate these groups it seems clear we could be doing better.

#17

I have not seen any evidence of this. Where does your information come from?

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#18

Conversations I had as a director, and after and you were both informed, Tom as I recall was pretty upset but no action was taken to my knowlege

#19

Okay, for clarity: you reported conversations, Tom was upset, but in the end no action was needed?

There’s a risk your post could be read as if a serious accusation was made by minority groups that they were being excluded, but those complaints were then ignored by the directors.

#20

This Guardian article says that it is only 2.5% in London: