I'm writing to follow up on the Lightning Talk analysing the sex of participants at RIPE meetings, and in particular the call for ideas for actions for the Programme Committee to take to "improve" the distribution (by which the speaker meant, to increase female participation). First, I will say that I was heartened that the speaker's analysis showed that participation at RIPE broadly matches the industry from which it is drawn. I would have been very disappointed if the predominantly male participation had acted to discourage women in our industry from attending RIPE meetings, and I am happy to see that there is no evidence of that. I do take issue with the speaker's personal claim that we should aim to "be better than our industry" and that we should measure success by whether female participation more closely matched 50% than matched female participation in our industry. And I'm worried by his call for the programme committee to act to move us in that direction. I think we all know where this is going; we've all seen this kind of gender politics in other spheres. Here is my credo. I believe that one of the positive characteristics of the RIPE community is that it is open to, and welcoming of, all participants. Our community has a wholly admirable tradition of robust discussion of ideas, exclusively on the basis of the ideas themselves, where contributions are weighed solely according to their own merits and not according to irrelevant characteristics of the speaker such as race, sex, nationality, or even employer or job title. That is something of which I think we should be proud, and we should jealously guard it against ideological attempts to introduce changes that would undermine it. If we go down a path that asks first for an assessment of the speaker's "diversity" (meaning their sex, race, and so forth), that would be a step backwards. To the female speaker who said she would feel more welcome if there were more female participants, I say this: I hope you feel welcome already. You are very welcome, as is everyone. And I hope nobody would judge how welcome they are as a zero-sum game in competition with some other group or tribe. I hope the Programme Committee does not start to say that contributions from men are less interesting or that presentations by men are less welcome because "we've got enough of you already", as is the clear if unspoken message of any attempt to artificially skew participation. Kind Regards, Malcolm. -- Malcolm Hutty | tel: +44 20 7645 3523 Head of Public Affairs | Read the LINX Public Affairs blog London Internet Exchange | http://publicaffairs.linx.net/ London Internet Exchange Ltd Monument Place, 24 Monument Street London EC3R 8AJ Company Registered in England No. 3137929 Trinity Court, Trinity Street, Peterborough PE1 1DA