Unveiling UL Standards & Engagement's Gender Action Plan - Sonya Bird in Conversation with Mark Ramlochan

Word to the W.I.S.E. #whystandardsmatter

You can read the full transcript of the conversation between Sonya Bird and Mark Ramlochan here:

Sonya Bird: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here today with such an esteemed person in the field of diversity. Mark, how are you doing?

Mark Ramlochan: I'm doing, I'm doing well. Sonya. I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having this conversation.

Sonya Bird: I am too. And it's so exciting. What we're talking about today is of course, gender diversity and gender responsive standards. And as you know, Mark, the UNECE Gender Responsive Standards Initiative aims to provide a practical framework for standards bodies. Seeking to make standards, they develop and the standards development process they follow, gender responsive. And I know that UL has been working for quite a while to consider signing that declaration and quite a number of international standards bodies have signed the declaration. Why is it that we have signed that declaration now?

Mark Ramlochan: Great question. You know, I think timing is a very important element of this and taking a look at the signing of the UNECE Gender Declaration. I look at it that that establishes UL Standards and Engagement as highlighting our commitment, right? Our commitment towards working towards creating gender responsive standards and achieving greater gender balance representation and inclusion in their standards, development process. I think it's also significant because we want to establish UL Standards and Engagement as a leader in supporting the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls through standardization. Earlier this year, we launched a brand new, brand and organization through UL Standards and Engagement. And with that launch, we looked at this as the perfect time and opportunity to align our strategy on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. And the signing of this declaration, which really does memorialize our commitment to equality and to gender inclusion. To date for the, the last number of years, we've been working on some great initiatives, supporting gender and inclusion, but through the signing of this declaration, I see it as that it will formalize and amplify those initiatives while signaling to the rest of the world, that gender equality and gender responsiveness is a strong area of focus for UL Standards and Engagement.

Sonya Bird: Oh, that's wonderful. Mark. Thank you. So, I know that the UN ECE gender responsive standards initiative has a few objectives. One is to strengthen the use of standards and technical regulations as tools to attain the sustainable development goal five. Which is on achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls. the second one is on integrating a gender lens in the development of standards and technical regulations. And the third is on elaborating gender indicators and criteria that could be used in standards development. And so now that UL Standards and Engagement has signed what are our next steps in addressing that gender issue?

Mark Ramlochan: Well, Sonya you're right. Signing the declaration. That was a fantastic milestone, but this is really where the real work begins now. And as you pointed out earlier, the Gender Responsive Initiative under UN E C E provides a practical framework, a practical way forward for standards bodies who want to develop standards and their process to be more gender responsive. And in taking a look at the actual declaration, we made a pledge, and we made a pledge to three particular things. The first has to do with affirming the gender responsive standards and standards development declaration, which we did. We affirmed it through the signing. The second piece is creating and proactively implementing a gender action plan for our organization. And the third aspect that we pledged is tracking progress and collecting, ensuring data, success stories, and good practices. So, through the signing of this declaration and supporting those three points, I see the key next step is developing a meaningful gender action plan.

Sonya Bird: Gender action plan sounds so important. So, can you tell me what exactly that means?

Mark Ramlochan: Absolutely. You know, I look at a gender action plan as a roadmap, right? A roadmap for the activities, the objectives we hope to achieve related to gender responsiveness. It's also a great way for the strategic objectives that we'll be pushing forward to be linked to a time bound framework. You know, when exactly are we going to be pushing and achieving these objectives? The action plan also gives great visibility into those objectives we hope to achieve and provides a, you know, I called it a multi-pronged approach to achieving gender responsive standards. This is our personal organization's action plan. It's our articulation of how we support the declaration. So, to me, that level of visibility, that level of accountability, is important. It's important to signal that this is more than just a document we have signed and that we'll file away in a draw., it helps elevate it that this action plan and signing the declaration will be the basis for a strategy and the subsequent supporting initiatives that will help us be accountable and really express our resolve to work towards creating gender inclusive standards, , gender responsive standards, and making our organization more gender inclusive as well..

Sonya Bird: I love it, Mark. I think it's important that we not only signed the declaration, but we're putting that plan together. That's a very important next step. So just, what would you say are the themes that support our gender action plan?

Mark Ramlochan: This is, it is such a critical piece, selecting themes, right? When selecting the themes for our gender action plan, we're striving to balance practicality with impact. We want to be as impactful as possible, but yet be attainable. While the empowerment of women and girls, which is SDG number five, as you mentioned, constitutes just one of the 17 goals. To me, it's a prerequisite to achieving each and every one of the goals. So, it's appropriate to consider standards through a gendered lens ones that recognize that systemic misrepresentation and asks the, how can the process better support the fight for gender equality? So, through our gender action plan, looking at a number of themes, our approach to fulfilling this plan will be on a series of horizons. For horizon one will aim to establish a tenable foundation and those themes that we're looking at right now, they include representation, the technical applicability of standards requirements across genders and education on gender responsiveness.

Sonya Bird: And that's great. So, I know with, with representation we hear a lot about the need for diversity, right? And, from my experience sitting on technical committees you look around the room. I would look around the room and there were very few women in there. And so how, how can we get more women engaged and make sure that we have that gender representation within standards?

Mark Ramlochan: So, we feel that promoting women's participation standards development, that's a fundamental element to creating gender responsive standards. Highlighting representation as part of our action plan provides that practical and measurable way to improve gender responsiveness in the standards. And unfortunately, right now we don't have the disaggregated information, the data on the gender breakdown of experts participating on our standards, technical panels, to really understand how many women represent and participate in our standards, development work and where do they participate. Taking a look at some of the work of U N E C E they've informally surveyed some standards, developing bodies to assess the current participation of women in their activities. Many organizations similar to UL Standards and Engagement simply don't have that disaggregated information on gender breakdown. However, the ones that did it painted a very clear picture of, of disparity in representation. For example, at the IEC of the 45,000 experts that contribute to the IEC activities, only about 5,000 were women. Another organization And in Canada where I'm based, women make up almost half of the labor force yet only account for 24% of experts on Canadian technical committees at ISO and IEC. So, with this, with this information and these trends, we're aiming our action plan to measure and improve the representation of women on technical committees and ensuring that the meetings that they participate in are inclusive to foster participation.

Sonya Bird: Excellent. Thank you, Mark. The other key theme you mentioned was around the idea of technical applicability of standards requirements. And I know, some of the examples I've heard about where a standard maybe didn't consider the size of a woman's hand, for example, with, gloves, for firefighters, I've heard that as an issue. If the gloves are not adequately fitting, they're not going to give the proper degree of protection, how have you included that in the gender action plan for UL Standards and Engagement?

Mark Ramlochan: Yes, technical applicability is such, such an important aspect, right? To, for the coverage of, of standards to ensure that they're impactful for everyone. To me, it's crucial that standards represent the interest, the needs, the experiences and the expectations of both men and women. And I think looking at the data and looking at some examples of standards, going back. You know, to my earlier theme on representation, historically technical committees have been made up of male contributors who rarely examined the gender dimension and not really consider the unique, specific needs of women in standards development. One striking example is the conventional three-point seatbelt used in cars designed in the 1950s. They did not take into count the consideration of bodies of women and in particular, pregnant women. And as a result, women have been more likely than men to sustain severe injuries in automotive crashes. And these have been the leading cause of accidental, fetal death related to maternal trauma for decades. So taking both women and men as the norm now has led to the development of safer seat belt standards, um, designed for broader populations. I think it's also important as we look at technical applicability to go beyond just physical dimension, we need to consider other factors such as, you know, body fat percentage peripheral vision, sensitivity to sound, pain tolerance and, and various strength characteristics when developing standards and when developing requirements such each of these factors can have an impact on the suitability of requirements for certain standards. Through our gender action plan, we aim to better understand the applicability of standards requirements with relation to human morphology and take the standards that are to date what I would call gender blind, right? Gender blind, meaning that they don't currently take gender into account and transitioning them to become gender aware where they examine, and they address gender considerations in some way.

Sonya Bird: Yes. And I think it's important to note all of the examples that, that we've given those I gave and those you gave, there was never any intentional. misuse of data or anything like that, it was really just a matter of, of these committees, not considering, , the full impact, right. Or the full opportunity. And I am pleased to see that there have been advances made, in all of the areas that we've talked about so far to consider that there are some specific needs of women. So that's, that's a very big plus. The third, , theme that you mentioned, I think was on education. You said education and on gender responsiveness. Was that right? And, and can you () that's right). Talk a little bit about that?

Mark Ramlochan: That's right. You know, I look at education as definitely a key component to address, some of those earlier points. I mean, as you mentioned, the gender-blind standards for the large part, those were not intentional. You know, a lot of that was just lack of representation, a lack of understanding and awareness of the needs, of genders, of the women being represented on standards as well. And I mentioned earlier that the issue of representation to me is an issue of equity. And education is important since I see the root of some inequities that exist are really related to biases that exist and these could be unconscious biases. So, I hope, you know, through our gender action plan to push a stronger education unconscious and an unconscious bias as an important tool. Another area of education that I see as important through our action plan is gender inclusive language where using gender inclusive language means speaking and writing in a way that does not discriminate against a particular sex or social gender or gender identity and does not perpetuate gender stereotypes. And given the significant role that language takes in shaping cultural norms and social behaviors, the use of inclusive language in our standards. It really is a powerful way to promote diversity and inclusion. And I think the final, you know, kind of point around education would be for the standards development authors themselves around the technical requirements. Education to standards authors on how to properly understand and integrate gender or biological differences into safety requirements. So, some of this education would be. Almost like the right questions to ask. Right. Asking the right questions to me is the key entry point. Does the standard proposal differentiate between men and women? If not, is it based on research on both sexes or is it male or female reference model? If it does, how, how adequate are the implications investigated in relation to other social or biological factors? So, you know, these are, these are just a few demonstrative questions that I think technical committees and, and standards development committees need to be aware of when developing standards, when developing requirements to ensure that that they're technically applicable to all genders.

Sonya Bird: So, Mark, we've talked about UL Standards and Engagement signing the U N E C E declaration, and then the resulting gender action plan, that UL Standards and Engagement has developed. What would you say are the intended impacts of that action plan? What, what do we hope to accomplish?

Mark Ramlochan: Such a good question, Sonya, you know, I'm grateful that for that question. but it it's complex, you know, it's a very complex question considering, you know, where we are in, in the development, right. We're very early in the development of our action plan. It's undisputable that these commitments will contribute to bringing new talent in standardization, have better representation of women at the standards development table and expand the diversity of the professionals of those involved in these activities. This to me will enhance the quality of the final standard, making it more relevant to a wider audience. I looked at the timing of, you know, we've just signed this declaration. And as I mentioned, there are over 80 signatories to this declaration, Sonya. I know that ISO and IEC and some other international bodies have signed , the declaration as well. What do you see as has worked well or possibly what can we learn from other signatories?

Sonya Bird: Oh, yes, that's a, a great question, Mark. , I'd say probably the most notable thing that IEC and ISO did was to establish this Joint Strategic Advisory Group on gender responsive standards. And I was very happy to be part of that group. And in fact, our work is still ongoing. but already we've seen a few advances. And the first thing that JSAG did was to develop a guidance and assessment form, that would assist the committees in developing gender responsive standards. And it's actually very similar to some of the things Mark that you mentioned, that's happening here at UL Standards and Engagement, but the guidance indicates that all participants in the standards development process have a role to play in considering questions of gender responsiveness throughout the process. And there are a few basic steps that were defined and the first is to assess diversity of thought in the committee. So that goes to, already the representation piece that, that you mentioned and consider if there are need to encourage and recruit, you know, women and others in the drafting group. The second one is to assume that there are implications because of gender differences. It's really think about the fact that there are differences and assume that there are implications because of it, within the standards development. And then the guidance also indicates that you should consider that there are potential gender implications, accounting for both physical and social aspects of gender. And then, probably the most important thing that the JSAG has understood is that we do need this sex, disaggregated data. And that's also something Mark that you mentioned how important it is to rely on data to understand gender differences and needs of, of various users of standards under development. And one of the things that the JSAG found is that data is not always available. And, so that it's a way to encourage technical committees to, to seek it out or determine if there are other sources that need to be, reached out to, help address that question, could even be the need for additional research, but, this again is, what, IEC and ISO has already been working towards with that JSAG and, I'm happy that there is a lot of overlap and similarity, between what we're seeing here at UL Standards and Engagement. excellent. Mark. I think this has been a very interesting conversation today. And is there anything else that you want to mention to our listeners?

Mark Ramlochan: Yeah, Sonya, I think it's been a fantastic conversation. I think there's so much great work yet to do ahead of us and we position ourselves so well through the signing of this declaration. I guess, you know, my final ask for listeners is simply a call to action, you know, in that we cannot do it alone. The success of this strategy and the action plan it'll depend on you and all the listeners, the key dependent on stakeholders engaged in the network to participate, particularly have women, you know, seek out opportunities to participate on our standards development committees as well, have their voice heard around the table. I think, you know, addressing the gender gap in standardization demands a concerted effort from all parties. You know that I hear this premise, that gender responsiveness is, you know, a quote unquote women's issue. I don't think it is. I think it's a fundamental human rights issue that everyone needs to support, and everyone needs to be involved in at some level. So, I would love our listeners to stay tuned for some of the actions, the initiatives, the supporting initiatives to our gender action plan, and constantly be vigilant, looking for opportunities to participate in our standards development activities as well. So, thank you Sonya very much for this, this opportunity for the conversation I appreciate it, very much.

Sonya Bird: Thank you, Mark. It's certainly been a highlight of my day. Thank you.

Mark Ramlochan: Thank you.