I'll second the idea of approaching people individually and explicitly asking them to participate. It worked on me. I never would have written my first article for the Code4Lib Journal or become a member of the editorial committee if someone hadn't encouraged me individually (Thanks Jonathan!).

It would also be good to find a way to somehow target the pool of lurkers who maybe aren't already connected to someone and get them more involved.

As far as anonymous proposals go, we recently had a very good workshop on implicit bias here. Someone brought up that found significant changes in the gender proportions in symphony orchestras after candidates started auditioning behind screens. There are also lots of studies about the different responses to the same resume/application depending on whether a stereotypically male/female or white/black name was used. Probably it's impossible to make proposals completely anonymous, but it would be an interesting experiment to leave off the names.

Kelley

PS Interestingly, I wouldn't instinctively self-identify as a member of the Code4Lib community, although my first thought is that that has more to do with not being a coder than with being a woman.


**************************
Kelley McGrath
Metadata Management Librarian
University of Oregon Libraries 
1299 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403

541-346-8232
[log in to unmask]