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.
I think individuals and institutions in EA need to do a better job of mitigating risks created by unequal power dynamics. In a previous job, I conducted research related to institutional accountability and sexual assault. One common theme is that the way that institutions and communities respond to bad behavior by key figures is shaped by their norms and systems, with certain attributes making accountability more difficult to achieve. In my opinion, there are several aspects of the EA movement as it currently exists—including the blurrier work/life boundaries for many folks, the outsize power of certain community leaders, the frequent reliance on ad-hoc rather than formal systems, and the movement’s small size—that make accountability particularly difficult, and I don’t feel that we have done enough to create systems that respond to these risks.
Let’s think through an example. (To be clear, this is entirely hypothetical.) Imagine that a woman is harassed by a prominent community leader. She works for a small EA org. Her boss is close friends with her harasser, and the org receives significant funding from his organization. She wants to say something, but she doesn’t want to threaten her job or their funding. Not only that, but most of her friends are in EA circles, and she knows speaking up would be divisive.
Some of the things that make this sort of situation more difficult in EA are based on parts of the community that would be difficult or undesirable to change. But some of them are worth changing, and the existence of all of them makes the creation of robust systems even more important.
I think it’s useful for institutions to think through these sorts of exercises. What if a major donor was engaging in bad behavior? An organization’s leader? To what extent would victims feel able to come forward? How likely would it be that the victim would face negative consequences from speaking up, vs. that the perpetrator would face real consequences?
There are always going to be bad actors. It’s up to communities and institutions to set up systems so that when improper behavior occurs (whether harassment, assault, etc.), it is more likely that bad actors will face accountability for their actions. With rare exceptions, the deck is stacked against the victim and towards the perpetrator; good systems can help reduce how strongly the deck is stacked.
What do these good systems look like?
This is just a start, but hopefully a helpful one! These are conversations worth having.