OpenStreetMap
Why WOMEN are pushing for a safe and inclusive space in OSM
Posted by arnalielsewhere on 10 December 2020 in English.I would like to share a previous talk and an experience to relate WHY women are pushing for a safe and inclusive space in OSM, as well as a strong and enforceable Code of Conduct (CoC).
We all love maps right? Ok, here is a map for you showing two (2) routes.
Imagine this scenario: It’s late at night and you’re walking home from point A point B. I would like to ask you, which route will you choose?
Is it Route 1 - a sidewalk outside a University Campus, along the road, with no lamp posts along the way, straight forward, and is a shorter walk
Or Route 2 - a footway inside the University Campus, with lamp posts along the way, have a bit of left and right turns, and is a bit longer compared to Route 1
To provide you mental images (actual pictures of the routes):
My (actual) experience:
This happened at night, I was with two male friends (2 of my favorite people!). We came from the mall (point A), and we decided to walk going to the place where we will depart from each other (point B). Friend 1 suggested we take the CP Garcia sidewalk (Route 1), while I suggested we take the footway (Route 2). We argued for a bit, Friend 1’s reasoning was that Route 1 is shorter and is more efficient to take. But I told them that it will be safer for us to take Route 2. Friend 1 wanted to argue more but we resorted to asking the Friend 2, he agreed to take my route (Route 2) if it makes me feel safe.
So which route did you choose?
Three points I want to raise:
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Depending on our priorities and experiences, we all have different motivations in choosing our own path. And it’s like apples and oranges, we cannot compare. What is important to you might not be important for me. Nonetheless, not one is more important than the other.
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The “sense of security” or “being safe” doesn’t leave women’s top priorities. Patriarchy, toxicity, misogyny, sexism - who suffers most because of these? Yesterday, Celine sent the A Call to Take Action and Confront Systemic Offensive Behaviour in the OSM Community to the talk and osmf-talk mailing list and Heather also shared it on a diary post. The replies are overwhelming! And the top and most responses (along with other threads/posts about different topics) confirmed the dominant voice / contributor in OSM: white, Western and male.
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As volunteers/contributors in OSM, we are sharing the same landscape. Do we really welcome diversity and inclusion?
Discussion
Comment from arnalielsewhere on 10 December 2020 at 09:14
If you chose to listen and be part of the change, please review/comment our Call to Take Action and Confront Systemic Offensive Behaviour in the OSM Community via this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/130JCTX9ve4H4ORXznmIVTpXiN3TX8nRGA8ayuTZ9ECI/edit#
Comment from imagico on 10 December 2020 at 15:00
I would probably choose route 2 under the condition that i have a reliable map that helps me avoid getting lost on one of the turns.
Which is a great demonstration i think that the core idea of OSM - to collect and openly share verifiable local geographic knowledge is a highly inclusive endeavor in its core. Anyone can map what has importance for them or for people they care about and no matter who mapped something - anyone can use that information to improve their life and their safety without restrictions - even if their use case has nothing to do with why someone mapped this in the first place.
People have different priorities and see the world through different eyes, which is why it is so important that OpenStreetMap is grounded in the knowledge of locals (and beyond that a broad and diverse cross section of locals) and that locals have and maintain ownership of their map. Reliable assessment of the safety of these routes will only be possible through documentation by local mappers, not through the work of some armchair mappers half around the world or some AI.
The question i would be interested in: Are there any verifiable safety relevant aspects of roads and paths that are not already routinely recorded in OSM like
surface=*,lit=*,highway=street_lamp?Comment from user_5589 on 10 December 2020 at 20:02
“Patriarchy, toxicity, misogyny, sexism - who suffers most because of these?”
Interesting question. I suspect that the real answers aren’t actually what you believe they are. So let’s look at the points raised in turn:
Patriarchy. The western world is NOT, repeat NOT a patriarchy; at least not in the sense you mean. Are there patriarchies in the world? Certainly. The Arab world for example is most definitely a patriarchy. Ditto much of Africa. Women don’t even have theoretical equality there, let alone actual equality. Those are the areas of the world where the real fight for women’s rights should now be. Those are the areas of the world where women are routinely treated like chattels and run roughshod over with no recourse to proper justice. There are certainly problems with individual sexists in the western world, just as there are certainly problems with individual racists in the western world. However to claim that the whole setup of the western world is a “patriarchy” shows a distinct lack of proper perspective. However it is true to say that overall in the world women suffer more in the places where there are genuine patriarchies.
Toxicity. This is very much a place where equality is present. Can men be toxic? Certainly. Can women be toxic? Certainly. The exact form of the toxicity shown often depends on the sex of the person displaying that toxicity, but tendency to be toxic is down to individual character and attitude rather than the sex of the perpetrator. So to claim that women suffer more from toxicity than men is preposterous.
Misogyny. Like with the alleged patriarchy in the western world, this is a situation where a term has been weaponised by activists. Are there misogynists out there? Undoubtedly. Are there misogynists behind every bush, waiting to ambush all the women in society? Absolutely not. Just as there are are misogynists out there, equally there are misandrists out there. As with misogyny it would be absurd to claim that misandry is a systematic problem of women as a whole. However that is the mirror image to what is claimed by many activists about men and misogyny. By the very definition of the word women suffer from misogyny more than men, but it is not solely men who are misogynists and the mirror image of misogyny (misandry) must also be considered.
Sexism. In the past did women suffer more from sexism? Yes I think that is a reasonable thing to say. However like with toxicity I would argue that it is now an equal opportunity evil. Consider female-dominated work areas: are there large programs to get men to take up these roles? Almost universally no. Why not then? If women are to be encouraged and prompted to get into male-dominated fields then why are men not to be encouraged and prompted to get into female-dominated field? That in and of itself is sexism. Then consider things like divorce and custody of children. During the divorce process and custody hearings are men systematically discriminated against? Yes. Custody of children overwhelmingly ends up resting with the women of relationships, rather than the men. Surely if there is to be true equality then the custody of children should be much more evenly divided. Beyond those two examples we are now also past the stage where equality of merit and regard exists for those traits traditionally regarded as male and those traits traditionally regarded as female. Unfortunately we are now at the stage where traditionally male characteristics are denigrated and denounced by substantial sections of influential people in society. What has this resulted in? A vast diminution in male self-esteem and self-worth and the effects of this have been extremely corrosive to societal cohesion and integrity. Many of the activists see it is as a zero-sum game: if women are to gain, men must correspondingly lose. It is extremely unfortunate that things have developed that way, but it is also a truth. So do women suffer most from sexism? At least in the western world I believe that there is a strong case to be made that the suffering is far more equal now, to all our detriment.
What happens when “safe spaces” are demanded? Massive censorship occurs. The very use of the phrase “safe space” should set off alarm bells as a result. Women have had every opportunity to be intimately involved in OSM over the years. Yet for whatever reason they didn’t take those opportunities in large part. How much of that failure is down to perception and how much is down to actual reality? I suspect I would come down much more towards perception being largely to blame than the post author would. There certainly are some real problems, but for me a great deal of the failure to actually do something concrete is self-inflicted.
Incidentally the phrase, “Restructure governance to be more equitable: an example of this is committing to Board Seat allocation for OSMF members who are women and non-cis males,” is tokenist, sexist and deplorable. Let people succeed on their own merits and their own actions. If they are put in place by quotas then they will forever (legimately) be viewed as inferior, token shibboleths to be ignored and marginalised. The common thread in all of this is the confusion of what true equality is. True equality is NOT equality of outcome. True equality is equality of opportunity.
Comment from Yury Yatsynovich on 10 December 2020 at 20:44
Country of origin, race and gender of OSM contributors that are not observable – how can discrimination be based on unobservable characteristics?
Comment from Zverik on 11 December 2020 at 08:05
Yuri, we see that in indirect signs: mapped and unmapped attributes, comm and dev channels demographic, governance. Even welcome screens and tutorials have an unconsious bias.
Comment from Zverik on 11 December 2020 at 08:06
Chris, are lit=* and street lamp really “routinely” recorded? I don’t see them as often as say road lanes or surfaces.
Comment from julienfastre on 11 December 2020 at 09:38
I thank you, @arnalielsewhere, for this post. As I see comments above, this is really needed for our community, and I will read such posts about differences in perception with great interest - but I do not feel comfortable enough with English to make an answer to them.
Comment from amapanda ᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ 🏳️🌈 on 11 December 2020 at 10:19
@Yury Yatsynovich, from your photo you look male, likewise @Zverik. Tell me again how gender isn’t observable?
@Zverik Have you seen StreetComplete? It has several very fast & quick ways to add
littag. I’ve been using it lots lately. We can eventually get it all mapped!(Not gonna touch @user_5589’s “contribution” 🙄🙄)
Comment from gileri on 11 December 2020 at 10:29
@᚛ᚏᚒᚐᚔᚏᚔᚋ᚜ 🏳️🌈 I can’t cite your offensive message, I’m refering to your first citation : I don’t think one should asume genders based on profile pictures. If they ask to be publicly identified as such (pronouns for example) then sure.
Do you think it would be inclusive and welcoming to tell that to transitionning people for example ?
Comment from user_5589 on 11 December 2020 at 10:52
Let’s now turn to this particular example, and why streetlights and lit status may well not be recorded as much as other things?
So is it, as Zverik implies, down to bias against women, or is it, as others state, that things of this type must be mapped on the ground? Can the number of lanes a road has be seen from aerial imagery? Yes. Can the surface of a road be seen from aerial imagery? Yes, although not as easily as the number of lanes a road has. Can whether a road has streetlights be seen from aerial imagery? Yes, sometimes. On larger roads it is often fairly easy to see whether streetlights are present, and where they are from aerial imagery. On smaller, often residential, roads it is often pretty much impossible to see where streetlights are from aerial imagery due to trees being in the way and the streetlights themselves being physically smaller. On footpaths it is even worse than on smaller roads.
So in order to add streetlights to the map (micromapping in and of itself, so less prevalent generally), or even to see the presence of streetlights and thus be able to set the lit attribute it becomes progressively more difficult to do from aerial imagery as the way concerned gets smaller. So that implies using Mapilliary (or similar) imagery or doing an in-person survey. For footpaths Mapilliary is going to be even less prevalent than for residential roads, further boosting the importance of in-person surveys.
So it is a fact that recording streetlights and lit status is much more likely to require an in-person survey than recording number of lanes or even road surface. Is the process of recording streetlights and lit status by in-person survey any different for men than for women? No. Walk along the route; reach a streetlight; record the position and suitable other attributes of that streetlight using an appropriate method such as the Vespucci editor on an Android device. Done.
So why is it then that it is implied that there is discrimination against women involved in this? The women of this world have as much opportunity as the men of this world to walk along paths and survey whether they are lit and/or where the streetlights are. If you have an itch, scratch it. Don’t sit on the sidelines and complain. Go in and actually do something about it.
Guess what I did last night? Walked along a road, updating the attributes of streetlights that I had already mapped previously. I have now mapped thousands of streetlights around where I live. I have also inserted lit status to a lot of the local roads as well. Why do I map? It gives me a reason and motivation to get out and see the local area and take exercise. It also allows me to make a contribution to the general, societal good.
Choosing which attributes or objects or items to map will indeed have a personal bias involved in it. There is nothing that can be, or should be, done about that except to make such mapping easier by providing data visualisations and quality assurance tools to assist in the process. Choosing whether or not to map in the first place will also have a personal bias involved.
The sources of those personal biases and choices are what large elements of this discussion are about. There is a thesis which the activists heartily dislike, and even effectively decry as heresy. What is that thesis? There are genuine, biological, inherent differences between men and women. There are physical differences. There are physiological differences. There are character differences. There are inclination differences. There are aptitude differences. The last three are much harder to pin down and prove than the first two. However there are those who deny the existence of the first two as well. There is a large overlap between those who deny the existence of the first two and those who demand “safe spaces” and quotas and token representation and equality of outcome. Hence my reference to “safe spaces” being something that should set off alarm bells.
Activists of that inclination and attitude are toxic, destructive and a large part of the cause of many societal ills we currently endure. The manifesto advocated on the mailing list contains many of the talking points and tropes and attitudes of those activists. Consequently the manifesto is a net negative and should be viewed with suspicion.
There are genuine problems with inclusivity and prejudice to be dealt with. Quotas and “safe spaces” and tokenism will not deal with those problems, but in fact make them worse.
Comment from imagico on 11 December 2020 at 11:00
@Zverik - with routinely recorded i meant there are established tags and support for them in editors and other tools. I was specifically looking for other safety relevant aspects for which we so far have no established mapping concepts.
Comment from user_5589 on 11 December 2020 at 11:21
@᚛ᚏᚒᚐᚔᚏᚔᚋ᚜ 🏳️🌈 so why are you “(Not gonna touch @user_5589’s “contribution” 🙄🙄)”?
Do you have a problem with my logic? Do you have a problem with my contentions? Are you going to engage in substantive rebuttal or just remain in evasive, vague and generalised denigration?
Incidentally I’m afraid that Streetcomplete can’t be part of the solution to the problem if you’re going to remain true and pure and sound according to the activist point of view. Why? Well I’m afraid that it confirms “the dominant voice / contributor in OSM: white, Western and male.” The main author is German (and thus western), so far as I am aware male, and given the ethnic makeup of Germany there’s a good chance they are white as well. It is thus a tool of the patriarchy.
I know: why don’t you create something to solve the problem? Oops. According to your bio on your profile page you can’t either. “I’m Rory McCann. I’m a mapper and programmer originally for Ireland, but now based in Germany.” So you’re definitely western, which is one strike against you. The name suggests male, which would be another strike against you, but the reference to the pronouns to use suggests transgender and/or activist. I don’t know your ethnicity, but like with the main author of Streetcomplete there’s a pretty good chance you’re white given you’re from Ireland.
So you definitely have one strike against you, and possibly all three strikes against you. Also it is quite correct to say that “… from your photo you look male … Tell me again how gender isn’t observable?” would be interpreted as a transphobic comment in activist circles.
Isn’t it nice to be judged by the standards the activists use? Such a unifying, uplifting, positive set of criteria they use. Yeah right.
Comment from amapanda ᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ 🏳️🌈 on 11 December 2020 at 12:05
You made that up 🤣. No-one is saying that. C’mon if I’m an activist, I might know a thing or two about this, and hence why I know “judged by the standards the activists use” is rubbish.
Comment from arnalielsewhere on 11 December 2020 at 14:07
To keep it simple, if you are a (white, western) male and know you are not doing anything wrong, you wouldn’t be offended by this Call and don’t have to be defensive of yourself.
I hope that is clear.
Comment from gileri on 11 December 2020 at 14:19
@arnalielsewhere : One of the immediate change that this document calls is restricting Board Seats to persons based on discriminative traits : sex and country of origin.
Racism and sexism, and discriminative messages such as yours are rejected by a lot of people, so being wary of this document seems logical to me.
Comment from Yury Yatsynovich on 11 December 2020 at 14:57
The lack of diversity does NOT prove discrimination.
A simple mechanism that could explain the gender bias without any discrimination inside the OSM: “OSM is more likely be of interest to a tech-educated person than to an average person + males are more likely to major in tech-related fields than females => males are more likely to participate in OSM than females”.
So, the gender bias in OSM can be just a reflection of a gender bias in majors and the female quotas for OSMF board will not address this general educational problem.
I’m not saying that there is no discrimination in OSM, just that to claim that it is there you need something more conclusive than gender bias.
Comment from user_5589 on 11 December 2020 at 16:03
“To keep it simple, if you are a (white, western) male and know you are not doing anything wrong, you wouldn’t be offended by this Call and don’t have to be defensive of yourself.”
WRONG! To again use activist “logic”, you don’t get to decide what is offensive or not. In the activist paradigm it’s purely based on the feelings of those against whom the comments are directed. In that paradigm your comments are extremely offensive and prejudiced.
Beyond that “logic”, we come to actual reality. In actual reality the manifesto is also objectively racist and sexist. You, like so many of your ilk and views, purport to be “inclusive”. You spout all of the “correct” language and use all of the buzzwords. However when even a cursory examination of such views is made it all boils down to this: it is based on racialism and prejudice. Everything is down to race or orientation or sex or gender or colour of skin or similar. People are divided into tribes and groups and pitted against each other through divisive, poisonous rhetoric. Everyone is treated according to the tribe or group that they “belong” to. They cannot leave what they “belong” to because what they “belong” to is inherent to them.
There are certain, very unpleasant groups in history who held (and indeed hold) such racialist views. Those groups count the worst mass murderers in history amongst their adherents and indeed creators. Those beliefs and groups and individuals are directly responsible for the deaths of between 100 and 150 million people in the 20th century. So I have very, very good reason to be very, very strongly against the intellectual cohorts of such groups.
“You made that up 🤣. No-one is saying that. C’mon if I’m an activist, I might know a thing or two about this, and hence why I know “judged by the standards the activists use” is rubbish.”
Yes I did make that particular one up. However it is perfectly in line with and congruent with the philosophies expressed in that manifesto. Streetcomplete is just as much, if not more than OSM, a product of “white, western and male”. So why should OSM be crucified as a result of those philosophies and Streetcomplete be spared? At least be consistent in philosophy and behaviour.
Incidentally I am quite aware of what being part of a minority against whom prejudice is directed is like. I am part of such a minority, and have had such prejudice directed against me. Heck I’ve even been racially abused to my face on one occasion! That racism is nothing to do with the minority I am a part of however. So anyone who makes the charge that I can’t speak authoritatively on the subject due to lack of actual experience is dead wrong.
Comment from emilyeros on 11 December 2020 at 19:06
If I had a nickel for every time I tried to trace a road on the map but just didn’t have the @^~APTITUDE~^@
Amirite, ladies?!
Comment from westnordost on 22 December 2020 at 12:32
Hey arnalielsewhere, I’ve read your article a couple of days ago and came across this discussion on hackernews just now which you and anyone else interested in pedestrian routing might find interesting: Show HN: Find the safest well lit walking route between two locations.
Of course, OpenStreetMap is mentioned quite a bit in that discussion cause it is natural to try to source this information (whether a path is safe or not) at least partly from open data. What I find most interesting in this ongoing discussion is that many other factors that may effect pedestrian safety are mentioned that could be taken into account, some of which may be candidates to be tagged in OpenStreetMap.
Comment from Yury Yatsynovich on 11 February 2021 at 21:33
Looks like males and females are editing OSM in pretty similar ways, so it is not obvious that the gender bias transforms into the bias of what/how objects are mapped. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10708-019-10035-z