• Replies 5 replies
  • Subscribers 359 subscribers
  • Views 64 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Related

Interesting article on gender values in databases

Levi Sauerbrei
$organization

Some time ago I had made an inquiry with Tess support about the possibility of altering the potential values of the gender dropdown in the application. The answer at the time was that making such a change wasn't possible in the current application, but that some consideration might be given to it in the design of the NextGen product.

This morning I came across a blog post from one of the developers on the Diaspora project. (Diaspora is intended to be a Facebook-esque social network in which the backbone consists of "nodes" installed onto servers by the users of the system.)

The blog post, Why Gender is a text field on Diaspora, is a brief look at the developers thought process in making gender a very flexible piece of data.

Four years ago, at my first rails job, I worked at a company with a mostly-*** customer base. It turns out, in that context, knowing if someone is “male” or “female” gives you almost no useful information. The *** community has other widely-accepted categories of gender, but the company’s internal order tracking software — a well-known package from a national vendor — offered only male or female.

...

I made this change to Diaspora so that I won’t alienate anyone I love before they finish signing up.

The comments seem to be running about 50/50 between "So happy you've done this!" and "Meh".

I know there are a lot of design considerations being made in the planning for the NextGen project.  Just wanted to share this link as a bit of a thought provoker and conversation starter.  I suspect that some Tessitura licensees find themselves with unique constituent populations that might benefit from this type of flexibility.

-Levi

 

Parents
  • $organization
    Heather and Levi, thanks for bringing this question up.

    I use Tessitura in an education setting, and in addition to Heather's No. 1 and No. 2 reasons for collecting the information, gender is very useful to us in class and camp registrations, birthday parties and other youth-focused programming. This piece of data is in fact required by our web code.

    Perhaps the most important reason for us is to have data about what performance titles and keywords have more sales with boys vs. girls. For example, if our engineering classes are attracting mostly boys, we may modify our offerings and marketing to appeal to families with girls. (In fact, we are participating in a grant-funded program involving girl-specific classes tied to the PBS show SciGirls.)

    Second, we will look ahead and select or pair teachers and assistants who can best teach whatever the gender composition of the class happens to be, so that we can play to the strengths of our staff and enhance everyone's experience.

    In addition, we ensure that everyone who registers in (for example) "Camp Curie for Girls" is in fact a girl. We answer parents' worries that their child will be the only child of their gender in a class.

    These are the education-related ideas that come to my mind. Thanks again for bringing this up!

    Michael Wilcox
    Program manager, Youth and Family Programs
    Science Museum of Minnesota
    mwilcox@smm.org
    (651) 221-4571

    Showing for the very first time on the Omnitheater’s 90-foot domed screen, Hubble will take you on an awe-inspiring tour of the cosmos.  Make plans to see it today, and marvel at the great wonders that the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed.  For more information and a trailer, visit www.smm.org/hubble.

Reply
  • $organization
    Heather and Levi, thanks for bringing this question up.

    I use Tessitura in an education setting, and in addition to Heather's No. 1 and No. 2 reasons for collecting the information, gender is very useful to us in class and camp registrations, birthday parties and other youth-focused programming. This piece of data is in fact required by our web code.

    Perhaps the most important reason for us is to have data about what performance titles and keywords have more sales with boys vs. girls. For example, if our engineering classes are attracting mostly boys, we may modify our offerings and marketing to appeal to families with girls. (In fact, we are participating in a grant-funded program involving girl-specific classes tied to the PBS show SciGirls.)

    Second, we will look ahead and select or pair teachers and assistants who can best teach whatever the gender composition of the class happens to be, so that we can play to the strengths of our staff and enhance everyone's experience.

    In addition, we ensure that everyone who registers in (for example) "Camp Curie for Girls" is in fact a girl. We answer parents' worries that their child will be the only child of their gender in a class.

    These are the education-related ideas that come to my mind. Thanks again for bringing this up!

    Michael Wilcox
    Program manager, Youth and Family Programs
    Science Museum of Minnesota
    mwilcox@smm.org
    (651) 221-4571

    Showing for the very first time on the Omnitheater’s 90-foot domed screen, Hubble will take you on an awe-inspiring tour of the cosmos.  Make plans to see it today, and marvel at the great wonders that the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed.  For more information and a trailer, visit www.smm.org/hubble.

Children
No Data