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 11 Advisory Board positions are member-nominated. The gender diversity of the AB has not changed this year after four solid years of progress resulting from our continued outreach to encourage more women and underrepresented groups to run.
Tabular version of AB by gender -
AB by geography
Looking at the Advisory Board by geography, all members during the first two years were from Northern America. Starting in the year 2009 and in subsequent years, the geographical diversity steadily improved until reaching in 2018 an equal number of participants in each region. Since then, the Asean representation has been expanding slightly with no change since last year, while the European representation has been shrinking and the Northern American representation has regained and exceeded the majority.
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
TAG positions are a mix of member nominations and appointment by the W3C Director. Gender diversity has started to improve in 2011 –the 10th year of that group. For the second year, a third of the TAG are women. We need to continue to make more progress towards greater diversity.
Tabular version of TAG by gender -
TAG by geography
Looking at the TAG by geography, the Northern American's contingent is now again the strongest with Asia/Australia unchanged at its previous highest, but the European representation remains fair. Improvement in diversity has been happening since 2013 as a result of outreach, including from the TAG itself, in search of 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 only one woman on W3M. It has improved to some extent, trending toward increase with no change for the third year in a row.
Tabular version of W3M by gender -
W3M by geography
Looking at W3M by geography is relatively good, still a little tilted towards Northern America, but not as much as before. Asean and European representation are comparable, amounting to slight over 50%. This has not changed in the past three years.
Tabular version of W3M by geography
Report prepared on 8 June 2020 by Coralie Mercier, Head of W3C Communications.