[clug] Open Source Software's Dirty Little Secret

[Daniel Pittman]

Eyal Lebedinsky <eyal at eyal.emu.id.au> writes:

> If I read this correctly then you are suggesting that somehow men and women
> bring something else to the party.

That isn't clear.  Perhaps she is trying to find out who believes that, or is
looking for something else?

...or, y'know, maybe she has a different opinion to other people here.  Which
happens, because this isn't just a giant conspiracy where everyone on the
"bad" side is uniformly shaped. ;)

> I thought that an earlier thread attempted to establish that there is
> equality of skills that should lead to equality of participation

I think you are unable to distinguish between two similar, but not identical,
discussions here:

One is the discussion of women *as a class*, and men *as a class*, and their
participation in FOSS, IT, and related areas.  In this discussion, indeed,
there is no supportable statistical difference in capability between the two
genders.

The other discussion is one that involves the discussion of specific
individuals within the broader class: a particular woman, a particular man.

In the later discussion there are, naturally, differences between individual
men and individual women — because they are *individuals*.

Statistics, and sociological analysis, only work in the bigger picture, but
they are specifically useful to discuss the overall system and to make
*predictions* about the later discussion, the one that involves individuals.


(...and, of course, it helps if those predictions are more accurate than
 random chance.  not all sociological theories, like your "gender difference"
 theory, produce useful results.)

> (and lamented it not being so, mainly blaming men).

Actually, it mostly blamed the environment that is created when a privileged
class of people — Men, University educated people, White people, Chinese
people, etc, etc — structure the world to their own advantage and the
detriment of others ... then blame things like gender differences for the
results.

A specific example would be someone claiming that the low participation of
women in IT or FOSS is a result of inherent gender differences, rather than of
IT and FOSS being an environment that excludes women and, so, deliberately
keeps their participation low.

(...or, y'know, "she wore a short skirt, so she had it coming")


> I actually agree with you. Men and women, as a generalization, do have
> differences (beyond the obvious) which often make them pick different
> fields of interest, different roles and different passions. But YMMV.

Can you find any support for this position?  Science really isn't on your side
here, because every time people look into it *expectations* are the biggest
determinant in different results along gender lines:

    In one study, volunteers were asked to remember how they had felt a
    few months earlier, and the male and female volunteers remembered feeling
    equally intense emotions. Another group of volunteers was asked to remember how
    they had felt a month earlier, but before doing so, they were asked to think a
    bit about gender. When volunteers were prompted to think about gender, female
    volunteers remembered feeling more intense emotions and make volunteers
    remembered feeling less intense emotion.

    — M.D. Robinson & G.L. Clore, 'Episodic and Semantic Knowledge in Emotional
      Self-Report: Evidence for Two Judgement Processes' Journal of
      Personality and Social Psychology 83:198-215 (2002)


    In one study, male and female volunteers became members of teams and
    played a game against an opposing team. Some volunteers immediately
    reported the emotions they had felt while playing the game, and others
    recalled their emotions a week later. Male and female volunteers did not
    differ in the kinds of emotions they reported. But a week later female
    volunteers recalled feeling more stereotypically female emotions
    (eg. sympathy and guilt) and male volunteers recalled feeling more
    stereotypically masculine emotions (eg. anger and pride).

    — M.D. Robinson, J.T. Johnson & S.A. Shields, 'The Gender Heuristic and the
      Database: Factors Affecting the Perception of Gender-Related Differences
      in the Experience and Display of Emotions' Basic and Applied Social
      Psychology 20:206-19 (1998)


    Dozens of such disguised-gender experiments have shown that adults
    perceive baby boys and girls differently, seeing identical behavior
    through a gender-tinted lens. In another study, mothers estimated how
    steep a slope their 11-month-olds could crawl down. Moms of boys got it
    right to within one degree; moms of girls underestimated what their
    daughters could do by nine degrees, even though there are no differences
    in the motor skills of infant boys and girls.

    — http://www.newsweek.com/id/214834  From Newsweek, Sep 14, 2009

[...]

> Do I want more women participating? No I don't. They will if they want
> and will stay away if they don't. FOSS is not different than any other
> social situation where equal participation is rarely found.

Tell me: do you, personally, feel encouraged or discouraged from participation
when you know that a significant proportion of the list consider you to be
sexist and a bit dopey?

I ask, because this is perhaps a personal illustration of the environment that
is being discussed: a place where many of the people treat women as
second-class 

>
> cheers
> 	Eyal
>
> Jessica Fryer wrote:
>> Well that's thet textbook answer but are you really looking for more of the
>> exact same?
>>
>> Are there any areas where a woman's influence might reverse a negative
>> trend, for example?
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 5:02 PM, Adam Thomas <adam.lloyd at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> The advantage would be a bigger community with more contributers and
>>> users. More skills and more ideas.
>>>
>>> I'd like you to do what ever it is you want to contribute. If you want
>>> to contribute code then contribute code! If there are other things
>>> that you want to contribute then do them too or instead of. Women
>>> should be able to make exactly the same contributions as men. That's
>>> what equality is about.
>
> -- 
> Eyal Lebedinsky	(eyal at eyal.emu.id.au)

-- 
✣ Daniel Pittman            ✉ daniel at rimspace.net            ☎ +61 401 155 707
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