This topic is dedicated to having a workshop-long discussion on possible actions to improve the diversity situation in the Coq community and during related events. Everyone is welcome to participate in the discussion even if you do not participate in the workshop.
One concern that has been raised very often to the organizers related to diversity and in particular to the attendance of people with children to the workshop is that having the workshop partly organized on a week-end is detrimental. We completely agree with this concern and we are sorry that it happened that way. As organizers of the workshop, we didn't have much control over the dates (this was decided by the IJCAR-FSCD organizers when the conference was still planned to be a physical event). It seems to me that our main mistake is that we didn't react quickly to the announcement that it would be organized virtually to suggest adjusting the schedule so that no events would happen over a week-end.
The consequences of this are very visible: several people with children declined to participate in the panel on libraries because it was held on a Sunday :disappointed:
Yes, and even for some people attending, or for their family, it has some negative consequences.
BTW, we've kept the Sunday program as lightweight as possible (compared to Monday) for this reason.
Are we going to see a full day of Coq Workshop with only male speakers?
I thought the situation had improved in the few previous editions, but this seems like a strong regression to me.
I think so. For the panel, this was really due to this being a Sunday, but for the talks, I'm afraid we received very few abstracts with female co-authors :frown:
I think this will deserve a serious debrief discussion TBH.
We have a female co-author, Karine, who just couldn't attend on a Sunday.
Sadly I'm quite busy and it will be difficult for me to actively participate during the workshop, but I'm also very interested in this discussion.
Last updated: Jun 10 2023 at 06:31 UTC