Code of Conduct

Introduction

Madison Women in Tech (WiT) is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form.

This code of conduct applies to all WiT spaces, both online and off. Anyone who violates this code of conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from these spaces at the discretion of the WiT organizers.

Harassment includes:

• Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, age, race, or religion.
• Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment.
• Deliberate misgendering.
• Gratuitous or off-topic sexual images or behaviour.
• Physical contact without consent or after a request to stop.
• Threats of violence.
• Deliberate intimidation.
• Sustained disruption of discussion.
• Unwelcome sexual attention.
• Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease.

WiT prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort.

WiT organizers reserve the right not to act on complaints regarding:

• Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as "Leave me alone," "Go away," or "I’m not discussing this with you."
• Communicating in a "tone" you don’t find congenial
• Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions

Reporting

If you yourself are being harassed by someone attending or involved with WiT, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact the WiT organizers at admin@madisonwomen.tech, or find someone in-person to speak with. If the person who is harassing you is on the team, they will recuse themselves from handling your incident. We will respond as promptly as we can.

We will respect confidentiality requests for the purpose of protecting victims of abuse. At our discretion, we may publicly name a person about whom we’ve received harassment complaints, or privately warn third parties about them, if we believe that doing so will increase the safety of WiT members or the general public. We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent.

Consequences

Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.

If a participant engages in harassing behavior, WiT organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from all WiT spaces and identification of the participant as a harasser to other WiT members or the general public.