Inclusive Language in Standards Development: a Conversation with Muhammad Ali and Caroline Treuthardt

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

You read the transcript of the interview with Muhammad Ali and Caroline Treuthardt, here:

Host: Ali and Caroline. Thank you for joining us on this Word to the Wise podcast.

[00:00:48] Caroline Treuthardt: Thank you for having us.

[00:00:49] Muhammad Ali: Glad to be here.

[00:00:51] Host: Could you both tell us a bit about what you do in your organizations, especially around developing more inclusive practices with respect to standards development.

[00:01:01] Caroline Treuthardt: Sure, thanks again for having us here it is a pleasure to be speaking with you. And I can give you a quick intro into what we are doing here at UL Standards and Engagement. So, regarding inclusive language, we are currently in process of developing our own internal guidance for this approach. And that means drafting everything from documents, for handling our in-house policies and procedures. As well as planning for how we want to approach this topic in our standards catalogue. I, myself, I am a member of the inclusive language team that has been tasked with developing this guidance. And so, this team is in its infancy, and we have just begun drafting methods for how to introduce and implement the updated terminology. And in this stage, we are having to review and define our approach. It is really understanding the why of inclusive language to ensure that we reach the intended impact of the how. So that, includes educating our staff, our stakeholders, on why we are choosing to go down this journey of inclusive language. And then, you know, determining the best ways to have these terms implemented into our existing standards.

[00:02:08] Muhammad Ali: Thank you for having me. I work for Industry Standards, Program Office responsible for managing the overall external standards engagement and leading HP strategic standardization efforts in US based standards organization. HP participates in over fifty-five standards development organizations, trade organizations, consortia, and fora, with over four hundred experts involve in standards development. Creating a culture of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion has long been integral to HP success. And we think that diversity and inclusion at all levels drive innovation and performance. Internally I lead internal outreach efforts on diversity and inclusion for our office. And we have recently launched an internal toolkit for our experts participating in standards development activities. You know, we started out on these efforts, within our office by understanding our current demographics of our participants, and then coming up with a plan on how to expand diversity within standards development activities. So one of the outcomes of that plan was a recently released internal toolkit to educate our internal stakeholders on United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, specifically SDG Five on Gender Responsive Standards and inclusive terminology relevant industry standards efforts and then also providing them the guidance on creating and finding gender responsive standards.

[00:03:45] Host: And as both of you do these interesting things, why has inclusive language become so important in the standards development process? What does it bring to the table?

[00:03:57] Muhammad Ali: Standards development is not possible without the use of collaborative teams. We call them working groups in most of the standards development committees, and really, you know, effective use of inclusive language is essential to pull productive collaboration and really promoting diversity in, in standards, development activities. And language that is racially, ethnically, and culturally inclusive is effective in promoting respect, reflecting diversity, and avoiding any kind of negative stereotypes. Standards, procedures, and any kind of relevant technical documentation is therefore a powerful tool for building inclusion and supporting diversity. There are currently efforts underway in majority of the SDOs, major SDOs to create principles of inclusive terminology and other relevant policy documents pertaining to promoting diversity and inclusion at the org level. So, in my view, standardization is really a key to challenging gender inequality and standards and a standards development process, play a critical role in promoting gender equality.

[00:05:16] Caroline Treuthardt: I absolutely agree and second everything that Ali has just said. As he noted, HP and others and us here at UL Standards and Engagement, it is our belief that inclusive standards will open that standards development process to a wider set of stakeholders. And our intention as an SDO is to build the best, most applicable, most useful standards that we can. And if our spoken language or our written terminology is preventing full participation from our stakeholders, if they in any way feel unsafe or unwelcome, we are not going to be able to develop that standard to be as applicable as much as we intended to be. And so, for us to do our jobs well, and to serve the public by keeping everyone safe, you know, we need to have those traditionally marginalized voices at the table. And by incorporating inclusive language, we are going to create an environment where we welcome that wider array of voices. We include those experiences and hopefully more data actually to review and consider. And by inclusive data in my mind, I am thinking, you know, it is data that covers a wider set of demographics, such as a pain threshold or a body dimension of a woman or a child versus men, which is typically the data points that we have readily available. And so, with all of this included, this ensures that the science behind the safety in our standards is reaching more folks and helping more products and more systems be safe as it is more applicable to more people. And in more situations,

[00:06:51] Host: And as, you go about making standards applicable and you go and try and bring all that data in. How do you engage existing groups of decision makers with the whole idea of making standards development language more inclusive and all encompassing.

[00:07:06] Caroline Treuthardt: That's a great question. And this is definitely, a piece that we are still working on. And our executive team asked us this exact question, not too long ago. So, as we are kind of going down this path, first you're saying, you know, what levels, like, how do you engage these different groups? Well, pretty much we are going to speak to anybody that will listen. And as we are doing that, we are kind of figuring out the different, the best ways I should say to approach these different groups. And so far, we've kind of been able to weed out two prongs of an approach, and I am sure there is many more, but so far, we've, we've kind of stumbled upon two. And the first is really education. And I think that education piece is going to be very dependent on who you are speaking to. So obviously if you are speaking to executives or decision makers, you know, they are going to want to hear more of the business case. And if you are speaking to, the grumbly folks who just, think you are being, reactionary to the situation going on in the world today. You know, you can kind of break it down in a different way. To show it's just the difference of the way you approach it. And you could show some different things that way. So, it is really all about the education piece. And luckily internally here at, at UL Standards and Engagement, we have a group that specifically works with engaging our stakeholders. And so, we have been working with them to develop a focus group and these focus groups we were asking, you know, our stakeholders, what kind of information do you need to be engaged in this conversation? What do you think that you're going to need to make your best decision? and through that, we're hoping, you know, to develop a toolkit and Ali, I might reach out to you after this and kind of see how you're doing on your toolkit. So that's that's the first approach is defiitely, education. And then the second prong is the implementation. So, as we are kind of sharing this message with our stakeholders, a lot of the feedback, I should say, pushback, you know, if we, if we do get pushback, it is usually they are concerned with how we are going to do it. You know, are we going to do a copy paste and just ignore the application of the term where it is in the standard for, for example. And so, they really want to know what our plan is for implementing that. And that is where we are trying to engage them, to have them be part of that conversation to make sure that the right word goes in and you know, is it, is it a copy paste with just a word exchange? Is it rewriting the whole sentence? Do we need to re-evaluate what we are trying to say. So, it is I think we have a lot of interesting conversations ahead of us and I'm looking forward to it.

[00:09:42] Host: And so, as you educate and have those conversations to implement more inclusive language, for the sake of our listeners, if you could just identify some terms or terminology that can be avoided or replaced by other more inclusive terms?

[00:09:57] Muhammad Ali: Yeah, sure. Terminology should be clear and unambiguous conveying only the intended meaning to all readers. And we can produce more inclusive documents by avoiding terms with negative connotations. So, I will give you some examples, blacklist or whitelist. You know, these are some of the terms that are, used in many technical standards currently. And these terms have the negative connotation of, racial discrimination. So, some of the alternative terms that, that we could use instead of blacklist could be block list, denial list or drop list similar to that for whitelist, we could replace that with allow list, access list, or permit list. So, you see that, if you think about rewriting the text, instead of directly replacing the non-inclusive term, it actually makes the text much more clear and allow you to replace the text, with the more inclusive term I will give you another example: master/slave. That is also a very common term that is used in many technical documents. The negative connotation there is, human slavery. So, alternatives to those terms could be: main/secondary, leader/ follower or primary/secondary, and so on. So, you know, these are just some of the examples to kind of give you an idea of what we are dealing with when we try to replace the non-inclusive terminology with inclusive terms.

[00:11:31] Host: That's so interesting. And Caroline, you, you alluded to the fact that you wanted to avoid any cut paste situation. So, if you give us some examples of where it has worked and where more thinking may need to be developed.

[00:11:45] Caroline Treuthardt: Yes, so we are still in the early stages of our implementation, so I do have a couple of examples. And so, the first one deals with Internally when we had originally introduced this to our team, we had done, a brief introduction to inclusive language, speaking to the points that Ali's made of how it is inclusive. And we, we want to kind of remove any sort of racial or colloquial language that, is not necessary or respectful and our next step was to share, you know, a list of terms for everyone to review. And so, we gathered the NIST list of words that they have put together as well as INCITS. And they have got a pretty comprehensive list and we shared that with our team. And we said, you know, if you have seen any other terms in the standards that you work with, you know, go ahead, and add 'em to this list and we'll, we'll review it. And one of the feedback, one set of feedback that we got from our team members, was that we were being woke and that we were trying to soothe white guilt. And, so I, I was not expecting that response by any means. And I was like, okay, all right. So first we realized that we did not do a very good job explaining why. Right. We, we needed to do a better job at that. But the second thing, and what I think is very important and, and what I was mentioning previously is, is the implementation. So, I called that team member. We had a lovely conversation and I just kind of asked them to explain more, like, what were their concerns? What were they thinking we were going to do? So, I could explain what we were actually planning to do. And it really came down to, they had, there was a previous event where UL had tried to do this before, and they just did a copy paste and it didn't make sense in context. And so, we definitely do not want to do that. I guess that is one example of like, it started out, well, it kind of got bad and then it kind of got better again so, but another one we're going to introduce this as well for the first time to our technical committee and, I've shown the presentation to the group. And we are going to talk about it here in a couple weeks. And the feedback I have gotten so far is really positive. But they are like, but the words you are using, we do not like, and I am like, that is cool. Let us talk about that. Let us let us see what the right word is. So, I am, I'm really excited to kind of see how that conversation goes.

[00:14:06] Host: Let us talk about it. It is a very evolving and expansive exercise. So where can SDOs Caroline that is where you come in and the industry Ali that's where you come in, come together, and collaborate better to make inclusive language universally applicable. The reason we ask is that we do have a complex mix of geographical, cultural, and other differences to take into account. How mindful must we be of these nuances?

[00:14:35] Muhammad Ali: You know, there, there is definitely a room for collaboration here and collaboration and coordination is essential in this activity. You know, there there's several similar activities in progress at many standards development organization, and the problem really arises if each SDO is coming up with different alternatives for the same non-inclusive term. Therefore, you know, I think coordination and collaboration is important to make this initiative successful via, some sort of joint standards development activities, you know, using effective liaisons, and maybe doing some sort of like a targeted outreach, to, to get the right stakeholders involved in the development efforts.

[00:15:21] Caroline Treuthardt: Absolutely. And if I can add some responses there as well to build off of, kind of what Ali was saying, we are in that same boat, we don't want to come up with terms that, you know, for example, the electrical committee for electrical panels, that kind of thing. We do not want to come up with words that they're not familiar with and that they don't agree to. So, we are really looking towards, other institutions to give us guidance. So, we want that type of guidance from say the national electric code. And I know that is something that they're working on now. So, we are involved with them to know what words they are going to propose and potentially put into their documents. And that, in turn, is what we are going to recommend to our technical committees. And we are going to point back to that.

[00:16:08] Muhammad Ali: That's great Caroline, I am happy to hear those efforts. I think that is the way it should be done.

[00:16:14] Host: Interesting. And how does this exercise really contribute to the larger mission of achieving sustainable development goals?

[00:16:21] Muhammad Ali: By using inclusive terminology, you are actually contributing to the overall goal of gender responsive standards, and therefore also contributing to United Nations, Sustainable Development, or specifically SDG five on gender equality. ISO and IEC have both mapped their standards recently to UN SDGs. And you can actually now search standards meeting specific SDGs using their search tool. So, you know, the, these voluntary consensus-based documents incorporating inclusive terminology, removes technical barriers to trade, builds trust, promotes safety, interoperability, and performance while translating those ambitions from the UN SDGs into concrete actions.

[00:17:15] Host: And what is the work that has gone in so far towards achieving those goals?

[00:17:21] Caroline Treuthardt: Well, I know from our side, you know, as I've shared, we've done a lot of work internally, but we are reaching out like, as Ali had mentioned before, we don't want everyone stepping on each other's toes and kind of developing their own, you know, path to success. I think it is definitely something that we all need to walk along together. So, on the team that I mentioned internally, the inclusive language team. We have a couple of members who are participating in INCITS, they are definitely a leader in this. As well as Ali just reminded me that we have some team members on the ISO group but I, myself actually sit on the IEEE P3400 Work Group. They are the IEEE is working on developing an inclusive language standard specifically for technical terminology and communications. And so that is again, that is we want them to be the leaders and we want them to kind of push that, but we are all, you know, all hands-on deck and we're going to do everything we can to help them along that process. And so, once they have got that standard, that is easy for us to take back to our technical committees and point to and say, all right, let us let us look what they have done. Let us look what ISO's done. Let us incorporate those into to the standards. I think it just helps kind of build the case.

[00:18:33] Muhammad Ali: Yeah, and, and I am just going to follow up on what Caroline just mentioned. You know, besides INCITS and IEEE, which both are working on national standard for inclusive terminology as was just mentioned. Recently, ISO and IEC have also created a joint working group on inclusive terminology and, and in fact, sub clause, 8.6 of ISO IEC directives part two explicitly requires the use of inclusive terminology in all ISO and IEC documents, wherever possible. So, and I have mentioned this before that many SDOs are taking up this initiative, but really the key, is to ensure that we have this collaboration and coordination also going on.

[00:19:17] Host: So, this collaboration coordination clearly is becoming a theme that is going to be important. Where should the focus now be, to taking this mission of more inclusive language and terminology and standards development forward?

[00:19:29] Muhammad Ali: I think the focus should be to not duplicate the efforts of other SDOs, but to leverage and build on what has already been published and, and really create an international standard on inclusive terminology. I think that is where we are we have a gap there. We also need to ensure that standards development committees have the required training, tools and resources to effectively implement the inclusive terminology. Because you can develop all the relevant standards, and they can be published, but if, if, if it is not being used, then you know, what is the value of it? So, we, we really want to make sure that, while we are working on this initiative of getting a standard out and publishing it, we also equipped the standards development committee members with the required resources for them to actually implement what is in the standard.

[00:20:22] Caroline Treuthardt: I absolutely agree with everything Ali just said. We definitely need support in that. And I think having those international standards to refer to would definitely help. And I would say, I think my take on that is is kind of building it to the next step is, you know, we are, we're a standards company. We write standards. Our sister company uses standards. But it is really, it is also about a culture change and that's kind of where I see the main step forward. So, it is, it is just like learning a new language or trying to break a habit. Like I try very hard not to cuss all the time. And so, you have to replace those words. And so, this is just, it is a mind shift, and you have to take your time and try to remember what the correct word is going to be. So, I think we need to be pushing towards that main culture shift in have inclusive language in the way that we speak to our friends and our family and, and just use that kind of across the board. And, but we also need to allow that room for grace because people are going to slip up. So, it is definitely a learning curve, but it's, I think it's something that we need to take bigger than just at work. I think it needs to go larger than that.

[00:21:32] Host: So, developing an international standards and culture change, Ali and Caroline, that was so interesting. Thank you so much for taking out the time to speak with us on the Word to the WISE podcast.

[00:21:44] Caroline Treuthardt: Thank you for having us.

[00:21:46] Muhammad Ali: Thank you for having us.