The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Geneva, Switzerland, from 17 to 21 December 2017. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> We have a concerted effort to bring more women to participate in the events that are very technical, and it's very male-dominated. I think that's, again, a good experience to share. So thank you for raising that.
>> Thank you, Karlina.
>> Is there any comment?
Most of all, and I think this is quite important to bring up now. We are not separated. This is a group of women who wanted to participate and wanted to learn from the experience of the members who are already in the community. So it is a very male-dominated community. There are great mentors. It's fantastic, this idea of finding members of the community who want to increase participation and mentor people. This is where we're going with these initiatives. One of the things that we have discussed is the idea of the importance of self-education. Remember, what do you want to discuss? Who do you want to be? What things are important for you. So when we discuss this, it was right after the story -- Does anyone know the story of the novelist? There was a novelist who her folks are incredibly successful. The report said to look her up and her life. To do that, there was a revealing of her real name, where she lived. What happens when that kind of vulnerability, when you're hidden from the world?
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>> We have a female communications administer. There were 15 people out of 450 participants. We got to choose them. We basically hand-picked the people we thought would represent a wide range of voices. We're really privileged we put out whose voices we want to represent. I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but I think we hold a really close diversity to the point where most of the comments this year from the surveys were: You're not creating a safe space for all white males. There's a problem where men feel like they cannot participate. It's a really unique position to be in. It's really fascinating.
>> That's great. I think one of the communities that inspired us to do this is a community called the Women Who Participate (?) Usually these conferences are a huge number of male speakers. So it's not a diverse world. They created these communities to discuss those positions. They had -- just like it said, they had the numbers. The numbers came up for participation. People like, Wow, we're changing the conferences? Yes, we are. They become more meaningful than they should be. Because governance has to be meaningful, right? So this was an inspiration to the community. If you look, you will find their writings and everything. There wasn't any open door in the beginning. It's not like you could go to the governance conference, and it's all women. Conversation will happen. Conversation will happen between people, and you will have a space where you can discuss that. So thank you for those experiences. It's great. It's really, really interesting to hear mindsets changing.
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Any other experience from their local or regional IGF?
So we had a conversation. Do you remember it, the inform session? So we did an inform session in the first day. We had, like, 50 or so people, and that was when it came out, with the stickers. It all started to adopt this idea of the IGF, and so now it became a regular. It was on the verge now. We had a documentary on other computers that we discussed. So these are activities, like, we knew someone would be there to discuss this movie, and it would bring a female that's important to us. So the director was there, and she discussed this movie with us. So who here is (?)
Okay. Quite a bunch.
Do you want to tell us who you are and what you do? Let's start from the back.
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>> Because it's very important in the birth of the woman and the community, the LGBT. It's important, also, to support the projects that know what we do in the community, how can we work together and contribute to the projects.
>> I will also emphasize that there were activities going on. There are many groups which are very welcoming. Society has been welcoming as well. There are stakeholder groups in the private sector. Most importantly, this is not only an ongoing but increasing conversation. It's about space. These are all a support network. We support each other in participating in things. One of the very interesting works, for example, bringing the new (?) so it can handle website and how that would work. Who would manage the sublevel domain. It's important we participate in these decisions for the community.
Anyone who would like to bring more experiences to our conversation? How do we bring women, particularly LGBTQI?
>> One thing we talked about when we organized sessions about how to bring more women into different (?) groups, what they told us is that women don't apply many times. They get very few applications from women.
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>> Do we have anyone from North America? We do. David.
>> Yes.
>> How about your interest of this theme?
>> It comes from thinking hard about (?) so, for example, creating an environment where LGBTQI people are required to out themselves in order to qualify for a quota or some sort of other requirement. I think that's something very worth(?)
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>> This is women in LGBTQI. So what do you think about this theme? Should we have this discussion in IGF?
>> Well, I think that it is (?) We should have this discussion in IGF.
>> Thank you. Sorry to put you on the spot, but I know that you were in one of the earlier sessions, so that's why I called you in. Thank you for your perspective. We need to bring up inclusion in dialogue. This is one of our goals here.
>> Sorry. You were talking about IGF. That meeting we have in the morning, I just need to bring that here to the table. We were seated. About a third were men seated on the table that day. So it began to show us (?)
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