As a follow-up from my post of 2 November about the statistical analysis of forum posts, I want to point out two statistics that I find interesting/surprising/worrisome:

• Members from the Global South make make only 33% of all posts - even though 67% of members are from the Global South (= developing countries)!
• Females have a preference for certain categories: Females post particularly in „equity and inclusion“ category. Females don‘t post as much in „sanitation systems“ category

I think the second bullet point we can't really influence. That's just our gendered world and interests, I guess (?).

But the first bullet point is something we should think about: what can we do to make it easier for people from the Global South to write forum posts? To become more active contributors, not just consumers of information? (does this also fall under the "de-colonise the internet" / " de-colonise WASH knowledge " debate?)

See slides from the presentation below:






The full set of slides is available here: www.susana.org/en/knowledge-hub/resource...library/details/3630

Regards,
Elisabeth 

In June this year we embarked on an analysis of our current SuSanA members (same thing as our registered forum users as it's the same database). See my previous post in this thread where I explained why we are doing this.

We now finally have the results and can share them with you. We have placed them on this statistics page:  forum.susana.org/forum/statistics?statsview=8   . The two images below are copied from that page. 



 

You could help us improve the accuracy of this analysis by checking and correcting (if needed) your details here, with regards to your gender and your location:  www.susana.org/change-details  . Especially for the data on gender, we still have a big unknown of 19% of our members whose gender is unknown to us, so please edit your gender if needed.

The results show:

• An estimate of 63% male members, 36% female members (and 107 team accounts) (total number of members currently: 13,000) - this is not a great result, I'd say we should strive for a target 49% and 49%, right? (I made it not 50% as there are still the team accounts and the non-binary people)
• 67% of members are from the Global South (developing countries); 33% from the Global North - this is a good result, but we'd probably want even more members from the Global South. What target could we give ourselves?

If you wonder which countries exactly we have grouped as Global South, please see here (scroll down a little):  forum.susana.org/forum/statistics?statsview=8

We have gone further and looked at how many posts are made by males or females and Global South people in the different forum categories. You can access that data here:  forum.susana.org/forum/statistics   Select the different statistics pages by clicking on the little icons at the top. Some interesting patterns to explore there, but I'll leave it up to you to take a look and point out what you observe and what you conclude? Let me know in this thread.

Regards,
Elisabeth

I would like to encourage you to please update your forum profile and SuSanA membership details today.

Why? Several reasons:

• It would help us with our understanding of the diversity of our SuSanA members and forum users: We are currently conducting a detailed analysis regarding our users and who posts on the forum.* (further details below) This includes gender and country (global South or North).
• It helps our forum and discussion style if we know who we are talking to.
• It can also help with your networking.
• It makes the forum less anonymous, more personal and thus more fun.
• It can help to clarify the context of your forum post.

What information should I add in the SuSanA membership database?

• In the SuSanA membership database please make sure that your country and gender are provided correctly. You can change it here:  www.susana.org/en/login   .
• Note the gender field was only added in July 2020. If you registered before this date, you can now select the right gender for you.
• Your selected gender is not visible for other people unless you also select it in your forum profile (the two databases are kept separate from each other).
• All information that you include in the SuSanA membership database is confidential and is protected by  our data policy .

What information can I add to my forum profile?

• You could add a photo, a personal text (this appears below your photo) and a forum signature that includes your role, organization, location and website (similar to an e-mail signature but you don't have to give your e-mail address or phone number).

How to edit my SuSanA forum profile?

• You can edit your forum profile (after logging in) here .
• If you need any help, just ask me or check the help section on the forum here

Thanks in advance!  (If you prefer to keep your forum profile completely anonymous that's OK as well).

If you have any comments about our planned analysis, please put them into this thread.

Regards,
Elisabeth


* More details about our planned analysis: According to: "what you don't measure you can't change..." we want to start investigating the diversity of our SuSanA members and forum users. We have an inkling that we have more males than females posting, and relatively more people from the Global North than the Global South. If we want to take steps to change that we first need to establish our current baseline. Therefore we are planning to investigate data such as:

• Number of posts by moderators in each category per month; number of posts by non-moderators in each category per month (his would allow us to calculate: % of posts made by moderators in each category and month)
• Number of posts by people from the Global South in each category and month (to decide who is from Global South we would look at the countries that the users have picked for themselves)
• Number of posts by women in each category per month 
• Number of unique people posting in each category per month

Are there other important parameters that we should measure as well? You can see on our statistics page here what we are collecting already.

Edit on 2 November 2020: the results have been analysed and compared with the forum user survey from August/September 2020, see here .