The French go federation has created a “Comité inclusion et diversité” (DEI committee), which will help to improve the experience of female go players, see the page Fédération Française de Go
Next Sunday 16th, a go camp for female go players is organized in Rennes, and is supervised by Ariane Ougier 4d, current French women’s champion and former European women’s champion. A similar event will be organized in May with Milena Bocle 4d. Hopefully this will motivate more women to play go.
Glad to see this hasn’t become a bad word everywhere
Here it’s the initials for the major power company (www.dei.gr) and I always do a double take.
Did it become a bad word throughout the US after Trump’s inauguration? Or was it already a bad word before that?
I would say that it has become a politically divisive topic in the USA
Is that…legal? 
wait why is DEI being discussed on the thread celebrating international womens day
Let’s see the thread go back to celebrating women’s achievements please 
DEI stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. It was mentioned above in the context of how DEI initiatives are aiming to improve the experience of female Go players:
A simple mention of it being helpful is fine, a discussion about why some people don’t like it and when that started seems guaranteed to provoke the derailing discussed above that plagued all previous posts. I think if DEI needs to be discussed not just mentioned, maybe it could be in any other thread?
Well, I think the original post of the thread is quite clearly about problems of sexism and gender discrimination, both on this forum and in society as a whole.
Addressing the problems of sexism is a core DEI topic, among addressing the broader problems of discrimination, racism, and various forms of bigotry.
That’s nice! Will there be a report (maybe in English) about what turned out working for the French federation? It would be really cool to be able to learn from each other.
I would also add that sexism from my point of view is about cultural practices realted to perceived gender and, therefore, is not as easily tackled as just celebrating current players (even if it can be part of it).
For the moment, according to the most recent report from the FFG board (link to all reports), the committee has just defined its missions that I summarize below:
On January 28th, one of the members of the committee, Alexandra Goloubkova, posted a message on Facebook. I copy-paste her message:
Hi everyone ! I’m Alexandra, I am responsible for the Inclusion and Diversity Commitee of the French Go Federation and next month I will take part in a group discussion regarding women and the LGBTQ+ community in Go. In preparation, I made a survey in order to get your opinions on how women and the LGBTQ+ people are treated in the Go community and gather ideas that can help make it more inclusive towards them : Inclusivity towards women and the LGBTQ+ community in Go
As a result, her Facebook post received many negative, anti-woke comments.
I don’t expect things to move fast, and we certainly won’t know before several years if something worked or didn’t. But at least raising awareness is probably part of the solution. Young generations in their teens or their twenties are educated about sexist and sexual violence in schools and universities, but older generations are generally ignorant about those matters.
Sorry to here that the anti-woke mind virus went to work immediately. I didn’t knew that French federation made such a bold but important move. If you need any help or know who contact best for some work power from Germany please feel free to write me at any time. This boatd is a federation policy that I can stand behind after many years 
Is there by chance any rough estimation how many woman in percentage approximately play Go?
I thought Go was a game that many woman play. After I read this post, Im not so convinced anymore 
Also Irl, when I was talking about Go, woman tended to seem way more interested than men. (They arent just more kind to me by acting interested than men, are they? Lol)
In two recent tournaments, I counted about 15% and 11% (not totally sure, as I don’t know everyone and had to guess their gender from their name). I suppose there are more women among casual players, for instance my club has 23% (or 26%, not sure) females of which several children. So my guess is that there are around 20% females among players, at least in western countries.
The Nijmegen Go Club has three female members, that is 20%.
It used to be less and there were even periods that there were no female members at all.
I noted this comment from Benjamin D-G, the latest EGF pro, in this interview:
I actually could have started sooner but the club was in a pub and back then in France it was still allowed to smoke in pubs so my mother didn’t want me to go there. I had to wait for the anti-smoking law to pass then I was able to play.
Similarly a lot of clubs in Ireland would’ve been in pubs, though we set up an additional meet-up in a boardgame (used to to be alcohol free) pub, which worked a bit better for younger members.
Yes, go clubs that take place late evenings in bars are not very welcoming for children. Our go club meets on Saturday afternoons in a public building dedicated to associations, which is better for young children.
Independently from that, the committee will have to work on the “safety” part: that is, to protect children from pedophiles.
What tools do they have to ensure that minors don’t end up under the supervision of (say) a youth tournament supervisor, teacher or coach who is a convicted pedophile?
In the Netherlands there is a legal document called a VOG (Verklaring omtrent Gedrag = Certificate of Conduct) for working with minors. The Dutch go association (NGoB) requires this VOG for volunteers who work with youth players, where the NGoB will pay the application fee (~40 euro) if a volunteer doesn’t have it yet. I also got a VOG like that.
Does France have something similar?