Because we do not collect participants’ data, to preserve privacy, it is difficult to gather data for different characterizations of diversity, and we do not have data about the many participants who are involved in different ways at W3C across our many work groups, mailing lists and GitHub activity.
We are able to focus however on gender and geography for several of our governance bodies:
- W3C Advisory Board (AB)
- W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG)
- W3C Management (W3M)
W3C Advisory Board
The W3C Advisory Board provides ongoing guidance to the Team on issues of strategy, management, legal matters, process, and conflict resolution. The elected Members of the Advisory Board participate as individual contributors not as representatives of their organizations. Advisory Board positions are W3C member-nominated.
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AB by gender
The gender diversity of the AB over the last 20 years has never been great, although the diagram shows that this has been improving recently. We are working on outreach to encourage more women and underrepresented groups to run.
Tabular version of AB by gender
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AB by geography
Looking at the Advisory Board by geography, all 9 members during the first two years were from Northern America. Starting in the year 2009 and in subsequent years, we've improved the geographical diversity and it's kept improving over these last few years.
Tabular version of AB by geography
W3C Technical Architecture Group
The W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) is a special working group within the W3C, chartered with stewardship of the Web architecture, to document and build consensus around principles of Web architecture, to resolve issues involving general Web architecture brought to the TAG, and to help coordinate cross-technology architecture developments inside and outside W3C. TAG positions are W3C member-nominated or appointed by the W3C Director.
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TAG by gender
Gender diversity only improved from 0 to 1 or 2 women on the TAG, and only starting in 2011, in the the 10th year of that group. We need to make more progress here.
Tabular version of TAG by gender
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TAG by geography
Looking at the TAG by geography, although the Northern American contingent is still pretty strong, improvement in diversity has been happening starting 2013, coinciding with what some in our community have referred to as the TAG reform: outreach from the TAG co-chair and members in search for the right people involved in building the Web in smarter ways.
Tabular version of TAG by geography
W3C Management
The W3C management team is responsible for the day to day coordination decisions for the team, resource allocation, and strategic planning. The diagrams use percentages because the number of persons on W3M has changed over the years.
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W3M by gender
There was a period when there was one woman at W3M. It has improved to some extent.
Tabular version of W3M by gender
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W3M by geography
Looking at W3M by geography is relatively good, still a little tilted towards Northern America, but not as much as before.
Tabular version of W3M by geography
Report prepared on 18 June 2018 by Coralie Mercier, Head of W3C Communications.