This is a CTP of initiative: FabLab 4 (East England)
This CTP refers to the decision to actively police and engage in discussion around the gender balance within the makerspace, and the type of language used within it.
As described in previous CTPs, one of the major transformational aims of the makerspace was to be as inclusive and open as possible, with co-founders deploying strategies around naming, funding, location, and identity to achieve these aims. In early 2016 – 6 years after the space had been founded and 4 years after it had moved into formal premises – the co-founders received complaints about institutionalized sexism in the space, which primarily (from the complaints) consisted of “casually apparently sexist remarks”. This came as a surprise to the co-founders who, as described in previous CTPs, had a number of systems and rules in place to deal with difficult members – but had not specifically considered how they might deal with sexism.
The sexist remarks themselves were comparatively innocuous – “There’d been comments about who should do the washing up, that kind of thing”, but, collectively resulted in a space that did not feel as safe as it could be for their members. After initially feeling underqualified and unprepared to tackle the complaints, the co-founders built on the work which they had already put in to developing a code of conduct and community standards around behavior, to continue to challenge sexist language and behavior. The co-founders also reconsidered their recruitment strategy for their all-male board of directors to explicitly look for, and encourage a wider demographic of people to join the board.
This CTP was co-produced by the demographics of the makerspace, and of the dynamics around wider hackspace culture. Sophie Toupin describes how “despite the openness at the heart of the [hackspace] model, groups such as women, queers, people of color etc have remained underpresented or completely absent from these spaces”, drawing attention to the issues of privilege which are often obscured by open and meritocratic cultures. This has led to led hackspaces forming “remedial strategies” such as women-only hack nights, codes of conduct; to feminist hackers and makers forming spaces of their own, framed by their own boundaries, and which include Double Union in San Francisco and Mz Baltazar’s Laboratory in Vienna.
The community at the makespace was “reasonably diverse” across many difference axes, as one of the co-founders described: “We have a full age range, 18 to 70 plus. We have people from loads of different backgrounds, artists and hobbyists and so on. And we have a fair number of women. There’s no question that there’s more men than women, but certainly a fair number of women. We’re not all white, we do have some black and Asian members, but Cambridge is a heavily white city”.
The skewed demographics of the makerspace also extended to the 3 co-founders, 2 of whom were male; and the board members who, at the time of interview, all of whom were male. The female co-founder had been considering standing down at around the time the complaints were made (but independently of them); but the complaints made her to reconsider both her position, and forms of board recruitment.
The CTP was additionally shaped by the volunteer-based nature of the makespace. Whilst the organization had hired an administrator in Summer 2015 (“not to replace volunteers, but to deal with the boring things”), much of the work in the space was done by members. The induction specifically highlighted how members would be expected to clean up after themselves and be responsible for the machines; that, with the exception of the single administrator, there would be no members of staff chasing after them.
However, this had a number of unexpected side effects. Firstly, there was an ongoing “major risk” of community volunteer burnout, as members worked for the makespace in addition to their other work and study. This burnout extended to one of the co-founders who decided in 2015 to step off the board of directors – “I was doing too much and dropping mission critical stuff”. Secondly, it meant that members who had responsibility for looking after machines had greater presence in the space: “Some women here are becoming increasingly visible, especially if they take on ownership of some of the tools. It’s still an ask though as it’s still community labour”.
Events shaping this CTP included the demographics of the makerspace (and of wider hackspace culture); and the volunteer nature of the organization.
The complaints of sexism created their own tension and upset in the space. Whilst the co-founders initially felt under-equipped to be able to deal with these issues, the forms of counter-response – actively recruiting a more diverse board, challenging sexist comments, and being more mindful of the demographic make-up of the organization – were collectively agreed on; and the co-founders described no frictions in these discussions.
This CTP was unexpected – as a co-founder described, “We thought we were doing well until then, and thought ‘I don’t know what we can do about that’”. The co-founders initially described feeling unprepared for dealing with these comments. They had taken great care in developing protocols to introduce members to the culture of the space through the induction sessions (as described in more detail in previous CTPs):
“When you become a member, you have induction, fire safety training and so on. We emphasise that it’s all volunteer run, so there’s no magic cleaning fairy. We make members sign a membership agreement document, developed with lawyers. No stealing, no sue-ing, that sort of thing. The community guidelines are an addendum to that”.
Because these protocols had resulted in a “very small number of [adversarial] incidences, which is maybe hard to believe”, the complaints of sexism came as a surprise, particularly as these issues hadn’t been raised until the space had been fully operational for 4 years. However, the co-founders were also aware of the consequences of not following up on these complaints. As Toupin describes, feminist hackerspaces “advance an understanding that systemic and structural problems (racism, sexism, transphobia, queerphobia etc) are societally embedded and thus manifest in hackerspace culture” – thus, if not explicitly challenged, these problems would persist, which might result in the space becoming even more homogenous.
This CTP was formed by the extent to which the events – sexist comments – undermined the transformative aims of the organization to be as inclusive as possible for all members; and the need to steer the organization back on track. The decision to reconsider the nature of recruitment for the board of directors also encompassed larger self-questioning about the strategies and approaches that had become unintentionally embedded into the organization over time, as one co-founder explained:
“We need fresh blood. I’d been briefing our new administrator and he asked me ‘Why do we do things this way?’ and I’d say, ‘Ah, well, back in the mists of time…’. I thought, my God, we’re doing all these things because of the mists of time, not because there’s a good reason to do it. We need to evolve. We need to break those historical tracks”.
By reconsidering their recruitment strategies, the co-founders also hoped to embed the transformational aims of inclusivity into the board of directors and thus, the longer term strategizing of the organization:
“We’re recruiting for a more inclusive board. Currently anyone can be a board member, but it’s only the men who step up. We want to advertise more widely and make it really clear that anyone at call can be a board member, and we really want to have everyone’s voices there”.
This CTP also raised questions about how much the makespace directors knew about – and wanted to know about – their own demographics. This was part of the larger fluidity of the intent and operations of the space itself, and also about looking out for the well-being of members, as one co-founder explained:
“We don’t take demographic data. I don’t think we need to, we just operate as a community. People are different ages and different genders. I don’t want to put together a demographic form, I don’t even want to ask people what their gender is. One part of this is about purpose – people always ask ‘Why do people use this space?’ and are astonished when when we say we don’t ask. But we don’t ask because people can’t always say, and we don’t want to make people uncomfortable by making them say if it’s work or hobby or art. The boundaries are blurred anyway – people come in to learn a new hobby and then learn a new skill and then it’s a business and then…”
As described above, learning and self-knowledge about demographics were also limited because of the volunteer nature of the space. One co-founder recalled how an early funding body had asked for reports on how the space was used but without criteria as to what this would look like. The team felt that the labour cost “spread over several sessions which someone has to co-ordinate counting for” was too excessive for volunteer work, so didn’t conduct the research.
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