Earlier said policy was “well-reviewed and effective”
The nation’s largest association of urban transportation professionals has dropped its identity-based conference registration system that put people who are male at the back of the line. This after saying the policy had been “well-reviewed and effective” and would be replicated for future events.
Note: The majority of WIBM’s articles are original stories covered nowhere else, including this one.
In our 2020 article “Transportation association offers priority registration for everyone except certain men,” we highlighted the you-go-last policy men were subjected to when registering for NACTO’s Designing Cities Conference that was held in December 2020. (NACTO is the National Association of City Transportation Officials, headquartered in New York City.)
We called NACTO’s executive director
We reached out to a member of NACTO’s board of directors about their policy that discriminated against males, and he suggested we talk with the executive director Corinne Kisner.
During a phone call with Ms. Kisner in February 2021, we asked what metric the organization would use to decide at what point it was no longer appropriate to place men at the back of the registration line. She seemed to acknowledge it was a legitimate question and should be considered.
NACTO staff said in an email last year that the identity-based registration scheme was “well-reviewed and effective” (see screenshot below), and that it would be repeated for future events. However, the registration page for the 2022 Designing Cities Conference shows no priority registration based on gender. Everyone is invited to register at the same time. NACTO has apparently chosen not to discriminate this year. (NACTO did not put on their annual conference in 2021, so the upcoming conference in September 2022 is their first one since 2020.)
NACTO said in the email above they planned to replicate the identity-based conference registration system “for future large NACTO events where there’s limited registration.” The registration page for the 2022 conference indicates attendance is limited, yet NACTO is not enacting a men-register-last policy this year.
It remains to be seen whether they will reinstitute that discriminatory policy for future events.
NACTO staff are overwhelmingly female
Given NACTO’s recent gender-based discrimination, it is relevant to view the gender composition of their staff.
In our 2020 article we reported how NACTO’s staff were overwhelmingly female. That remains the case today, with all six directors being women and 18 of NACTO’s 22 staff overall. Their board of directors is composed of three men and three women.
What exactly was the identity-based system?
For those who want to understand what exactly was NACTO’s discriminatory policy, this snip from an October 13, 2020 email from NACTO lays out their identity-based conference registration scheme.
