My role in R-Ladies

I am part of the R-Ladies Global Team. My tasks include advising the leadership team in decision-making, representing R-Ladies in the organization of major R conferences, generating content, making translations into Spanish, carrying out the campaign for International Women’s Day and collaborating with the general infrastructure that supports the chapters.

Mission

R-Ladies is a worldwide organization whose mission is to promote Gender Diversity in the R community.

The R community suffers from an underrepresentation of Women* in every role and area of participation, whether as leaders, package developers, conference speakers, conference participants, educations, or users (see recent stats).

As a diversity initiative, R-Ladies’ mission is to achieve proportionate representation by encouraging, inspiring, and empowering the minorities currently underrepresented in the R community. R-Ladies’ primary focus, therefore, is on supporting the R enthusiasts who identify as an underrepresented minority to achieve their programming potential, by building a collaborative global network of R leaders, mentors, learners, and developers to facilitate individual and collective progress worldwide.

*Please note all references to ‘W/women’ and ‘F/female’ within this document are used fully inclusively w.r.t trans women, genderqueer women, and non-binary people who are significantly female-identified.

R-Ladies Rules & Guidelines

• Free: Public events run by R-Ladies are always offered free of charge to participants.

• R Language/Environment specific: The contextual subject/domain scope of R-Ladies’ diversity initiative is specifically the open source R community.

• Leadership, Mentorship, Membership, Presenters/Speakers & Prioritization of Underrepresented/Minority Genders : In line with R-Ladies’ Mission Statement, community roles and participation is reserved and prioritised, respectively, for the genders who are currently underrepresented in the R community. As such, Leadership roles within R-Ladies communities, particularly Organiser and any Mentor roles, are to be held by Women, as the known minority gender identity. Membership within R-Ladies communities are also, therefore, to be held by Women. If there exists sufficient choice to have Presenters/Speakers at R-Ladies who identify as the minority genders, this is the preferred option. However, the choice of Presenters/Speakers is up to the relevant local Organisers’ discretion, depending on availability and potential value/learning opportunity of those who volunteer.

• Rules for Participation of Represented/Majority Gender: In line with R-Ladies’ Mission Statement, the genders/identities which are not underrepresented in the R community are not within the scope of this diversity initiative. The known majority gender group, those identifying as Male, can participate in an R-Ladies’ community within an appropriately designed framework, as per the relevant local Organisers’ discretion, e.g., as an invited guest of/sponsored by a Member, as a full Member etc. The majority of the speakers at any R-Ladies chapter needs to be of a minority gender and there is a strong recommendation for maximum one male speaker per event. Given this majority gender’s dominance in the general R community, there is no obligation for R-Ladies to focus/provide/allow comparable support or engage with this majority identity, particularly at the expense of the target minority gender groups - as such, it is feasible to enable, for example, Meetup membership requests to require Organizer approval, and allowing only those identifying as the target minorities to join the R-Ladies.

  • Note: Please do be aware of the relevant Equality Legislation in your jurisdiction, e.g the Equality Act 2010 in the UK, when designing participation frameworks for the majority gender, to ensure your procedures are not infringing local laws re. potential discrimination.*

• R-Ladies Code of Conduct : All members must follow the Code of Conduct.

• Community-Driven administration, independent of External influences: R-Ladies does not have permanent ties or links to external sponsors or parties. Appropriate sponsorship and support which does not seek to dictate or influence R-Ladies Mission-driven activities/decision-making but enhances the community’s operations and impact is welcomed. Local R-Ladies Organisers are encouraged to gain appropriate support which does not compromise the community’s independence.

• No commercial agenda: Chapters are started by individuals, not by companies. Chapters can partner with companies for sponsorship in the form of venue space, food or other supplies. Chapters and events may not be ‘used’ by a corporation/as a commercial vehicle for private aims. This also means that speakers cannot give talks about paid products/services, even if they don’t work at the company offering the product/service.