Let’s discuss: Challenges and opportunities women face in ‘open’ spaces

[ UUID ] 4caa0281-4b5e-4524-a910-20292c248bad

[ Session Name ] Let’s discuss: Challenges and opportunities women face in ‘open’ spaces [ Primary Space ] Openness [ Secondary Space ] Digital Inclusion

[ Submitter's Name ] Ana Brandusescu [ Submitter's Affiliated Organisation ] Open Heroines [ Submitter's GitHub ] @anabrandusescu

[ Other Facilitator 1's Name ] Mor Rubinstein [ Other Facilitator 1's GitHub ] @morchickit

[ Other Facilitator 2's Name ] Hera Hussain [ Other Facilitator 2's GitHub ] @herahussain

[ Other Facilitator 3's Name ] Edafe Onerhime [ Other Facilitator 3's GitHub ] @ekoner

What will happen in your session?

In our session, women are encouraged to share insights on both challenges and opportunities in ‘open’ spaces - open government, open data, and civic tech. The session will be campfire format, and will include smaller focus groups. The facilitators will speak for 10 minutes about their challenges and opportunities to helps foster a group discussion and peer-to-peer learning for the rest of the session.

We want as many Open Heroines (OH) present as well as interested newcomers and supporters. We will create a #mozfest2018 OH Slack channel to prepare for the session and further promote it over Twitter and our website.

What is the goal or outcome of your session?

For years, ‘open’ spaces have been male-dominated, from thought leadership, to government and civic tech, to civil society organisation positions. While some women hold critical positions, the field’s proportion of women leaders remains low. OH was created to address these issues - an international online community of over 330+ women, who work in open government, open data, and civic tech.

Insights from this session will help the OH community write a paper on challenges and opportunities in the open space. Findings will compliment research interviews in 2018 to better understand and learn from. These will be published and shared in the open spaces including the MozFest community.

Time needed

60 mins