Gender Bias in Open Source

Posted on February 12, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

I was trolling for something to write about today when I ran across this article click-bitingly titled “Women are better at coding than men — if they hide their gender.”

The article reports on an interesting, recently released study of Gender Bias in Open Source which looks at “acceptance rates of contributions from men versus women” on GitHub – an online community where users share, collaborate on, and review code in a variety of programming languages.

The study found that “women’s contributions tend to be accepted more often than men’s. However, when a woman’s gender is identifiable, they are rejected more often. Our results suggest that although women on GitHub may be more competent overall, bias against them exists nonetheless.”

This is troubling.

Interestingly, the article I found the study through takes these finding as a sign that women are better at coding than men – even adding the titillating header “the future really is female.”

Of course, that’s not an entirely accurate reading of the study. (To be fair, I imagine that the article’s title and quaintly 1950s header image were not selected by the author.)

As the study’s author’s themselves explain, there are many reasons why their analysis may have found women, on average, to be better coders. A key explanation may be what is known as survivorship bias: “as women continue their formal and informal education in computer science, the less competent ones may change fields or otherwise drop out. Then, only more competent women remain by the time they begin to contribute to open source. In contrast, less competent men may continue.”

That is, there’s no secret coding gene that makes women better programmers – rather, it is much harder for a woman to survive in the coding world, and therefore those who do are the best.

This explanation resonates with research done in other fields, and is underscored by a 2013 survey finding that only 11% of open source developers are female.

With that ratio, it would rather be surprising if the average woman did resemble the average man.

The ironic thing is that attention grabbing headlines declaring women better coders – while seemingly feminist in nature – have the unfortunate effect of obfuscating the real barriers to gender parity.

Women aren’t better coders; the women who are allowed to survive as coders are by necessity only the best. They are held to higher standards and constantly forced to the sidelines. In order to simply do the work they love, they are forced – in the words of one study referencing StackOverflow – to participate in a “relatively ‘unhealthy’ community.”

It’s hardly a wonder that women tend to “disengage sooner.”

Civic Engagement and Custodianship

Posted on February 10, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

I attended an interesting discussion today with Dan O’Brien, Northeastern Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, who also directs the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI).

BARI has collected numerous datasets related to Boston: 311 calls and 911 calls; event listings and ticket sales from ArtsBoston, property tax assessment records, data on bicycle accidents, and more. You can even access the data online here: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/BARI.

O’Brien discussed a number of projects he was interested in exploring with his work, but I was most struck by his work using data from 311 – Boston’s hotline for requesting city services – as an indicator of civic engagement.

Through the 311 system a person might notify the city of a burnt-out street lamp, a pothole, or any number of other issues.

This creates a dataset which can measure what O’Brien calls custodianship – essentially citizen actions to improve or repair a community good.

This civic indicator has typically been challenging to measure. As O’Brien notes in a 2013 paper,” custodianship entails the co-incidence of an ‘issue’ and someone who moves to address it. Although some such events might be regular, like an individual who sweeps the front walk daily, they will typically be rare.”

However, 311 data are starting to change that, with the added benefit that – at least in Boston – users register to use the system, making it possible to “aggregate cases for each registered user, permitting analyses that examine and compare patterns of custodianship across individuals.”

In his work so far, O’Brien has found that custodianship through the 311 system is “a rare act” – most users only reported 1-2 cases within the 15-month window. Of course, the 311 system only captures some portion of “custodial acts,” so it’s entirely possible that a low frequency of reports does not indicate low custodianship.

(Also possible: Boston is perfect and few requests for improvement are needed.)

Perhaps most interestingly, O’Brien has found that “Most individuals take responsibility for a narrow geographical range surrounding their homes.” This could be a simple indicator that people are more likely to see a problem in an area the frequent, but it could also indicate that people feel more custodianship over their immediate neighborhood.

This work is just the beginning of a really interesting exploration of the relationship between civic engagement, custodianship, and 311 calls, but with cities’ growing interest in collecting resident data, there will certainly be more great work to come.

Gender and Politics

Posted on February 9, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

Women, historically, can’t seem to get a fair shake.

For centuries, women in the west have been subjected to a sinner/saint duality. That is, any woman who fails to live up to an idealized construction of womanhood must automatically be relegated to the lowest depths of depravity – there is no middle ground, no subtly to society’s judgement of femininity.

As one author puts in examining this trend in Victorian literature, “When a woman deviated from the Victorian construction of the ideal woman, she was stigmatized and labelled. The fallen woman was viewed as a moral menace, a contagion.”

A contagion. For a woman, that’s how serious any momentary personal failing – or perceived failing – might be.

In modern times, this duality has haunted women seeking positions of leadership and power. Female leaders must be confident but not assertive; nurturing but not emotional, dedicated mothers and dedicated employees. In short, women must fulfill masculine ideals of leadership without losing an ounce of idealized femininity.

This is not challenging: it is downright impossible.

Victoria Woodhull was the first woman in the U.S. to run for president. She ran in 1872, a good 50 years before U.S. women won the right to vote. Woodhull, who was married twice and held the radical notion that women ought to have the right to marry and divorce as they choose, was widely accused of being a prostitute.

No doubt, this was simply a term for a woman who spoke her mind.

Ultimately, Woodhull spent election night in jail, arrested with her husband and sister for “publishing an obscene newspaper.”

“Obscene” in this case meant highlighting the “sexual double-standard between men and women.”

That is the history that has led us here. To the second president run of the most viable female candidate our nation has ever seen.

(I would, of course, be remiss here if I didn’t mention the dozens of other impressive women who have run for this office.)

And make no mistake, Hillary Clinton has suffered from the same old-fashioned double standards which have plagued women for generations. But solidarity on that issue is not enough to determine a vote.

When Clinton entered the 2008 race her campaign miscalculated a core fact about her base. Women, she expected, would be with her. Women of all ages.

This was not true.

As Abraham Unger, Assistant Professor of Government & Politics at Wagner College, wrote of the 2008 primaries, “Senior women, who came of age during the pioneering period of the feminist movement, did vote for Clinton, while younger women were drawn to Obama. Women in the middle were split between the two.”

With Barack Obama running a historic campaign of his own, it became impossible to disambiguate the effects of race, gender, age, and class in determining a person’s political affiliation. A vote for someone other than Clinton wasn’t a vote against womanhood; it was a vote for something more.

Women, it seemed, would have to wait.

When Clinton launched her current bid for the White House, I wondered what tactics she would take to close the age gap. Surely, she had learned that young women weren’t unquestionably in her court.

And yet here we are – watching the surprising rise of an old, white man – matching Clinton beat for beat; capturing the hearts, minds, and votes of younger voters.

Again, we see young people – men and women alike – drawn to the upstart, outsider candidate. The one who encourages us towards hope; towards radical change of a broken system.

Clinton supporters are not impressed.

I’ve been floored by some recent comments. Gloria Steinem said that young women supported Sanders because they were thinking “Where are the boys?” Meanwhile, Madeline Albright warns that “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”

Is this the feminism we are supposed to be defending?

To be clear, we’d do well to be mindful of the subtle impact of sexism. Anyone who doesn’t support Clinton should do some careful thinking about their reasons and motivation, watching out for the impulsive and flippant urge to deride her voice, pantsuits, or (lack of) emotions.

At least we can take comfort in the scrutiny of Marco Rubio’s boots.

But let’s never use gender as litmus test – one way or the other.

The truth, I suppose, is that feminism is changing.

I can’t truly appreciate the feminism of women who are older than me. Women who were mistreated or outright fired explicitly because of their gender; much less the feminism of women who were pushed into loveless marriages, who were forced upon by their husbands and who had no voice or recourse in the matter.

We should not forget the fight of Victoria Woodhull, nor of countless other women who have pushed relentlessly towards gender parity. There has been much to fight for, and the fight still goes on.

But right now, right here in this moment, thankful for all the women who have come before me – I am not looking for boys nor concerned about hell. I am simply looking for the candidate who most closely speaks to my diverse political concerns.

In this race, for me, it happens that person is man. But how lucky for me – I have a vote in the matter.

And no one can take that away.

Can You Become “A Morning Person”?

Posted on January 22, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

Someone asked me to write a post about becoming a morning person. Based, I suppose, on my expertise of frequently getting up in the morning.

I was skeptical – can one actually become a morning person? What does that even mean?

I suppose it’s no surprise that there are already countless articles on the subject – apparently, it only takes five minutes to become a morning person. Or, if you prefer, here are 19 Ways to Trick Yourself Into Becoming a Morning Person. (My favorite tip: “nap cautiously”). If you’re looking for a somewhat more legitimate news source, here’s a Times Magazine op-ed wistfully entitled, “How I became a morning person.”

I am still skeptical.

All these self-help articles are written in the blasé tone commonly found in fat-shaming weight loss articles. If you want to lose weight, eat less. If you want to be a morning person…just get up in the morning.

This advice does not seem that helpful.

For one thing, sleep habits are – at least in part – biologically determined. In one 2013 study, researchers used the standard Munich Chronotype Questionnaire to sort participants into “morning” and “night” type people. They then studied melatonin and saliva samples of the participants, finding the the difference in circadian rhythms could be “detected at the molecular clockwork level.”

I am certainly reaching far beyond my areas of expertise, but it seems as though there is sufficient evidence for the conclusion that it is unproductive to simply tell a night owl to try harder to get up in the morning.

To be compound the matter, there is some evidence to suggest that “misalignment of circadian and social time may be a risk factor for developing depression” – eg, that “night owls,” whose preferred timing is disconnected from what is generally socially acceptable – are at higher risk of depression.

To be clear, chronotype is not a binary state. On the whole, a population may skew towards early or late, but diurnal preferences are a distribution for which most people fall in the middle. So those individuals glibly writing guides for how they became morning people were most likely not particularly night people to begin with.

If you really want to be a morning person, it seems reasonable to give it a try…but if it really doesn’t work for you, it may be best try finding a lifestyle that better supports your given sleep preferences.

So, I guess I don’t have very good advice.

Discomfort and Civility on College Campuses

Posted on January 15, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

There seem to be incongruous concerns growing around many college campuses.

On the one hand, young people are accused of being fragile and coddled, too concerned with creating an artificial, shallow, ‘politically correct’ environment. At the same time, there are increasing calls for civility in response to student complaints.

The dance becoming familiar: something happens, students complain, the university administration calls for civility while the those watching from the outside throw up their hands at the coddled youth of today.

Why can’t they just calm down?

Let’s discuss this civilly.

I call these concerns incongruous because, while sounding like a call for moderation, calling for civility is essentially calling for a maintenance of the status quo. It’s a polite way of saying, you are wrong to be concerned.

Nobody calls for civility when outrage is considered to be well-founded.

As Audre Lourde says in her brilliant 1981 speech The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism: “Mainstream communication wants racism to be accepted as an immutable given in the fabric of your existence, like evening time or the common cold.”

Student protests are a disruption to that fabric. Favoring an absence of controversy, most administrations respond with level-head calls for civility. They hold community dialogues where only those who agree with them show up. The others have already written off the process.

Well-meaning administers say and do all the polite things, baffled by students’ outrage and anger.

Meanwhile, students see inaction and platitudes; calls for civility when any reasonable person would be up in arms. Students are as confounded by administration placidity as administrators are of students’ anger.

As Lourde describes, “I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger.” Our students cannot hide their anger.

Yet, civility and politeness are the prevailing norms in proper society. Perhaps it is only natural to expect proper students to conform to these norms.

There is a study I heard awhile ago – the most homogenous school districts give themselves the highest measures on discussing issues of diversity.

Diversity is easy to discuss when people are mostly the same.

It’s the places where there is true diversity, where people come from a wide variety of backgrounds – it is these places where topics of diversity are most difficult to tackle.

A risk-adverse administrator would be wise to prefer a homogenous community. With, perhaps, a splash of difference to benefit the mainstream and fulfill any principles of diversity.

This is the model that students object to. Students of color aren’t “diversity” intended to educate their white peers. And yet their anger is often dismissed as the sensitive ravings of over-privileged youth.

It is, I think, this aversion to risk, this aversion to discomfort, which is most problematic as we collectively strive towards social justice. Young people are told that they are wrong to demand safe spaces on campus, yet administrators, too, are guilty of seeking the outcome that most suits their needs.

And that just makes students even more angry.

Does Anger Lead to the Dark Side?

Posted on January 13, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

Anger is generally considered to be an “negative” emotion.

It is often intense, powerful, and unpleasant for everyone around it. The emotion may have several negative health effects, and may be especially bad for your heart. Anger management resources are widespread. Because of the problematic nature of anger, that it is “such a forceful negative emotion and makes people uncomfortable,” as one Psychology Today article puts it, “taboos about expressing it are widespread.”

To further complicate matters, many psychologists “believe that holding anger in is bad for you, that it only builds pressure to be expressed.” On the other hand, the American Psychological Association (APA) now says that freely expressing anger may be “a dangerous myth” used “as a license to hurt others.” Furthermore, “research has found that ‘letting it rip’ with anger actually escalates anger and aggression and does nothing to help you (or the person you’re angry with) resolve the situation.”

Feeding into the taboo nature of anger, it seems as though our best solution is to simply not have any anger in the first place – thus avoiding the conundrum of holding it in or letting it out.

Recognizing the seeming impossibility of simply deleting anger from our lives, the APA puts this a little more constructively, recommending: “It’s best to find out what it is that triggers your anger, and then to develop strategies to keep those triggers from tipping you over the edge.”

This strikes me as the advice you give when you don’t know what to say.

Most notably, this advice seems to imply that most anger is unjustified. Figure out what makes you angry and avoid it, the way a person with Celiac ought to avoid gluten.

But what if what makes you angry is…injustice? What if you are angry because of historical legacies of power and oppression, because of deep disparities which are so entrenched as to seem normal?

A coping mechanism hardly seems appropriate for the task.

In one of the few memorable lines from The Phantom Menace, Yoda uses a line of thought similar to the APA when he proclaims, “Fear is the path to the dark side…fear leads to anger…anger leads to hate…hate leads to suffering.”

Yet, this is the the logic of someone in power – it subtly assumes that anger is little more than the selfish reaction of someone who doesn’t get their way.

There is, of course, a certain truth to Yoda’s claim – there are plenty of instances throughout history where fear mongering has proven to be an effective, though unfortunate, tool for power, hate, and suffering.

But the idea that all anger intrinsically leads to hate goes too far.

This is a danger, no doubt, but the power of justified anger is a force to be reckoned with. A power which can critically be harnessed for positive social change.

As Hitendra Wadhwa writes in a 2012 piece on Martin Luther King:

Great leaders do not ignore their anger, nor do they allow themselves to get consumed by it. Instead, they channel the emotion into energy, commitment, sacrifice, and purpose. They use it to step up their game. And they infuse people around them with this form of constructive anger so they, too, can be infused with energy commitment, sacrifice and purpose. In the words of King in Freedomways magazine in 1968, “The supreme task [of a leader] is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force.”

Radical Acts of Kindness

Posted on January 12, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

The phrase “random acts of kindness” is most commonly attributed to author Anne Herbert. In 1982, in Sausalito, California, Herbert wrote on a placemat:

Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty

The phrase was then popularly refined to “practice random acts of kindness.” Growing up in California in the 1980s, this phrase was everywhere.

I never really liked it.

I appreciate the sentiment – kindness towards others is generally a good thing – but random acts of kindness? Here’s what I imagine:

I am out in the world. I see a person in distress. I have the ability, with little cost or effort, to provide help or support. I flip a coin.

Randomly, I decide whether or not to be kind.

Surely, this is not what Herbert intended, but nevertheless, the phrase seems inappropriate. Random kindness removes intentionality, agency, context. Random kindness is predictable, perhaps, on average but generally no better than fumbling around in the dark. A random choice between kindness and inaction.

I propose a different phrase: radical acts of kindness.

Perhaps kindness seems so passé as to be the opposite of radical. As a social norm, kindness is generally accepted to be good.

Sort of.

Consider the work of philosopher Peter Singer. In his 2002 book One World, he shares a example he conducts with his class. He starts by quoting Victorian philosopher Henry Sidgwick:

We should all agree that each of us in bound to show kindness to his parents and spouse and children, and to other kinsmen in a less degree: and to those who have rendered services to him, and any others whom he may have admitted to his intimacy and called friends: and to neighbors and to fellow-countrymen more than others…

Singer writes, “When I read this list to my students, they nod their heads in agreement at the various circles of moral concern Sidgwick mentions.” And this all does seem more or less reasonable: you care most for your closest family, and then for your closest friends, and then more generally for your acquaintances and connections. Every person in the world can be mapped to your various circles of concern, indicating, approximately, how much kindness you ought to show to them.

But Sidgwick is not through. He did, after all, write more than a century ago. His quote continues:

…and perhaps we may say [we are bound to show kindness] to those of our own race more than to black or yellow men, and generally to human beings in proportion to their affinity to ourselves.

Well, that got awkward. Singer shares that at this point, his students “sit up in shock.”

And it is shocking. To go from caring more for your immediate family to being an racist seems like quite a leap. It hardly seems immoral if I prefer to donate a kidney to a loved one rather than a stranger, yet, as Singer points out, there is something troubling to these circles of concern.

This element is particularly troubling in conjunction with the numerous studies which show that people tend to self-segregate into “like” groups. Again, it doesn’t seem intrinsically immoral to want to spend time with people you can easily relate to – yet if we grow closest to those most like us, and we care most for those we are close to…the ultimate result is a self-fulfilling loop of power and supremacy.

Singer argues that we need to reset our sense of “like”, seeing all humanity as part of our global community. Our neighbors are suffering, and it makes no different whether they are 10 blocks away or 10 thousand miles away. He proposes a specific policy solution – donating a minimum of 1% of your income to those most in need. But even with this practical implementation, he provides little guidance on how to shift one’s thinking and feeling.

This is where we get to radical acts of kindness.

Perhaps there are circles of concern – even Singer concedes that it’s reasonable to care for your family more than strangers. I’m inclined to agree with Singer that, especially among strangers, we need to shift who we see as “like” ourselves, but this shift doesn’t address the fact that there’s a basic inequity to the circle of concern model.

Singer’s plan would address global poverty while doing little to confront the deep racial and social injustice experienced in our own country.

A radical act of kindness is being kinder than social norm would generally dictate. Showing true care for someone you hardly know, regardless of their distance from you, regardless of their likeness to you.

Radical kindness is pushing the boundaries of those circles, changing the norms of how much kindness is proper to show. Radical kindness seeks to go beyond social obligations.

Such radical acts of kindness are not easy, and those circles of concern will never – and perhaps should not – go away. But we can each push the boundary of what it means to care for our fellow man, each seek to make the word a little better – not randomly, but radically.

Words as Actions

Posted on January 11, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

A common critique of dialogue is that it is “just talk.” That is: it’s useless to talk about injustice if we don’t act to confront injustice.

This is a reasonable complaint, yet it minimizes the value of dialogue – relegating words to a hollow role of little to no meaning.

I’ve been reading J. L. Austin’s How To Do Things With Words, a compilation of notes from his 1962 William James Lectures. Far from deriding words as “just talk,” Austin starts by examining words as actions.

These performative statements, as he calls them, are verbal actions. Words that accomplish an act.

When getting married, a person says, “I do.” That statement is the act of marrying. When naming a ship, a person might declare “I name this ship…”. To make an accusation, one would rightly say: “I accuse…”

These words are actions.

Austin spends much of his time examining how performative statements such as these may be “unhappy” or infelicitous – a person may not have the authority to name a ship, one person may say “I do” while the other has a change of heart. And, of course, there are those particularly devious forms of infelicity – a person may be insincere in their statements, they may lie or have other intentions.

Such infelicity may abort or debase an action, but Austin has no doubt that there is a class of felicitous speech-acts, which are, indeed, acts.

Consider the sentence, “I promise that…” This, Austin argues, is an action in itself: “It is not a description, because (I) it could not be false, nor, therefore, true; (2) saying ‘I promise that’ (if happy, of course) makes it a promise, and makes it unambiguously a promise.”

Not all talk is performative, of course, though Austin concedes that in a certain sense, all speaking is an act.

When we issue any utterance whatsoever, are we not ‘doing something’? Certainly the ways in which we talk about ‘action’ are liable here, as elsewhere, to be confusing. For example, we may contrast men of words with men of action, we may say they did nothing, only talked or said things: yet again, we may contrast only thinking something with actually saying it (out loud), in which context saying it is doing something.

Yet, Austin’s true interest in performative statements is deeper than simply the act of speaking as an act itself. To clarify this point, Austin sorts the act of “issuing an utterance” into three categories: you can make a sound, you can say a word, or you can – essentially – make a performative statement. Austin here calls this a “rhetic” act.

To be clear, not all sounds are this type of action, but Austin is voracious in his argument that rhetic acts are important and should not be dismissed as “just words.”

Saying something will often, or even normally, produce certain consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience, or of the speaker, or of other persons: and it may be done with the design, intention, or purpose of producing them…

And here we have the crux of the matter: words not only have meaning, they have consequences. Words that are true acts, which are more than “just talk,” have impacts on everyone around us.

Those who decry “just talk” are right to deride hollow or infelicitous comments when action is what’s needed. But Austin, too, is right to highlight the value of words: the value of words as actions, words which can make change.

Reclaiming “Citizens”

Posted on December 15, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

Like many who work in the civic realm, I use the word “citizens” a lot. Usually with the clarification that I don’t mean the term as a legal status, but rather as a way of describing people who are part of the same community or who live in the same area.

This difference in meaning is significant. To talk about the work of improving communities as relying on the engagement of citizens (of legal status) has wholly different moral and political connotations than seeking the engagement of all citizens (who are connected to a community, regardless of legal status). .

For that reason, many civically-minded organizations have elected to drop or minimize use of the word “citizens.” In my days as a marketer I would have advised them to do so. It’s a bad enough sign if you have to explain a term to your audience, but you definitely don’t want people to interpret something as exclusive when it is intended to be inclusive. That is not a miscommunication you want to have.

So why persist in using a term that is so widely understood to mean something different than what I mean by it?

First, there’s the poetry of it. “Citizens” is a simple word, and there is no other term that so concisely indicates “people who are part of a community.”

But more importantly, citizens have rights.

Again, this could be interpreted in the legal sense – legal citizens have legal rights – but the word has a broader civic meaning as well.

All people who are part of a community or who are affected by a decision have the right to participate in shaping that community or making that decision. Regardless of legal status, citizens have the right to participate as full members of the community.

I think of this non-legal use of the word “citizens” as a reclamation of sorts, though truth be told the word “citizens” has always been problematic.

It is a word whose function is to divide the haves from the have nots; to indicate who has power, who has the right of full participation. The precise legal and social understanding has changed – “citizens” were once only wealthy white men; our current understanding is only slightly more benevolent.

That’s why it’s so important to reclaim – or perhaps simply claim – this term. All people have rights; all people have the right and responsibility to participate in their communities as citizens. This right is not bestowed by some legal definition; it is an intrinsic human right.

Until we recognize all our neighbors as true citizens and as equal partners in shaping our communities, we not only impinge upon this important right, we shut out important voices and energy, harming our communities through a narrowed perspective.

Civic Voice and Civic Duty

Posted on December 14, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

Earlier this month, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) and the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) released research showing that Americans’ volunteering rate remains strong. Over a quarter of U.S. adults volunteered through an organization last year, while nearly two thirds volunteered informally.

This is welcome news, but also disconcerting: recent trends point to steady volunteering rates but drops in other civic activities. A December 2014 report found that “16 of the 20 civic health indicators dropped,” with volunteering as one of the few positive outliers. Collected by the U.S. Census Bureau, civic health indicators cover topics including voting, volunteering, political expression and group membership.

Personally, I am quite concerned about indicators related to civic voice. A 2010 NCOC report found that, among Americans who are not engaged with a community group, less than 15% express their political voice in one or more ways. This number rises significantly for those who are involved in a group (about 40%) and especially for those with a leadership role within a community group (nearly 70%).

But the disparity indicated by these gaps is alarming. Under 10% of the population falls into the category of “leaders,” raising important questions about the socioeconomic and gender disparities represented in that gap.

For example, a 2012 study by my former colleagues at the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) looked specifically at the civic lives of young people with no college experience – some of the most underrepresented people in our society.

When one focus group was asked whether they had a voice in their school, they all simply laughed. One young man in Little Rock argued that student voice in school was a myth: “Even when you are class president and school president you still don’t have a say, so … it’s only a show.”

Another student is quoted as saying, “even if you do voice your opinion it won’t do any good—the suits are the ones who are gonna make all the decisions.”

That is deeply problematic for civil society.

Too many people feel as though their voice does not matter, as though their perspectives don’t add to the world.

This is a fallacy. A myth perpetuated by false social standards laying claim to what types of people have value and what types of views have value.

All people have value; all voices matter.

Unfortunately, too many people have been taught that their voices don’t have value – that they would only add to the noise if they ever dared to speak up. Once this message is internalized, the civic silence is hard to break.

But that’s why it’s important to remember – speaking out is not a luxury, its not an activity you do to show off how important you are. It is a civic duty. Sharing your own voice and perspective – particularly for those whose voice and perspective is often overlooked – is critical to transforming the state of civic dialogue. Everyone’s voice needs to be heard.

There’s this great and terrible irony in the world – it’s the people who worry about being rude or incompetent or otherwise being a terrible person who are the least likely to be rude, incompetent or an otherwise terrible person.

The same can be said about civic voice – if you never speak up because you are so convinced that your own voice can’t possibly add value, then you are depriving the rest of us of your wisdom. I know it is awkward, and I know it feels self-aggrandizing, but forget about all that: we need your words and your perspective. It’s a civic duty to share your voice. Really. We can’t tackle the hard problems without you.