After some recent discussion on the forum and on twitter about negative experiences that women have had in EA community spaces, I wanted to start a discussion about concrete actions that could be taken to make EA spaces safer, more comortable, and more inclusive for women. The community health team describes some of their work related to interpersonal harm here, but I expect there's a lot more that the wider community can do to prevent sexual harrassment and abusive behavior, particularly when it comes to setting up norms that proactively prevent problems rather than just dealing with them afterwards. Some prompts for discussion:
- What negative experiences have you had, and what do you wish the EA community had done differently in response to them?
- What specific behaviors have you seen which you wish were less common/wish there were stronger norms against? What would have helped you push back against them?
- As the movement becomes larger and more professionalized, how can we enable people to set clear boundaries and deal with conflicts of interest in workplaces and grantmaking?
- How can we set clearer norms related to informal power structures (e.g. people who are respected or well-connected within EA, community organizers, etc)?
- What codes of conduct should we have around events like EA Global? Here's the current code; are there things which should be included in there that aren't currently (e.g. explicitly talking about not asking people out in work-related 1:1s)?
- What are the best ways to get feedback to the right people on an ongoing basis? E.g. what sort of reporting mechanisms would make sure that concerning patterns in specific EA groups get noticed early? And which ones are currently in place?
- How can we enable people who are best at creating safe, welcoming environments to share that knowledge? Are there specific posts which should be written about best practices and lessons learned (e.g. additions to the community health resources here)?
I'd welcome people's thoughts and experiences, whether detailed discussions or just off-the-cuff comments. I'm particularly excited about suggestions for ways to translate these ideas to concrete actions going forward.
EDIT: here's a google form for people who want to comment anonymously; the answers should be visible here. And feel free to reach out to me in messages or in person if you have suggestions for how to do this better.
The Economist article discusses the practice of widespread polygyny: that is, men who have multiple wives and whose wives are only married to them. As a matter of mathematics, polygyny (without polyandry) means that many men will stay unmarried, which makes them less connected to society and more likely to behave violently. That argument seems true to me.
However, the argument hardly seems applicable to the egalitarian polyamory almost always practiced by effective altruists. Poly female effective altruists can and do date multiple people. Further, many poly effective altruists are in same-gender relationships. If anything, polyamory as practiced by most effective altruists seems to reduce relationship inequality. People who have trouble finding a primary relationship can find a secondary relationship and receive many of the benefits of a romantic relationship. (Although not all, of course-- I don't mean to erase the very real loneliness that comes from having a hard time finding a primary partner, even if you have secondaries you love.)
Further, the article discusses polygyny in cultures where women are literally bought from their families by wealthy men. Both polygamy and monogamy are harmful relationship structures when women are sold by their fathers to strangers three times their age. That doesn't mean that either is harmful when freely chosen by an individual in a society with much better protections for human rights in general and women's rights specifically.