[clug] Open Source Software's Dirty Little Secret

[Michael Cohen]

Eyal,
   The problem of women participation is FOSS is only one example of
women participation in lots of other areas of academic achievement -
and this has been looked at in detail in recent years.

See for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat
and lots of links following from there.

Sometimes the mere expectation that women are not good at FOSS or that
participation level should be low or that its an obvious thing due to
physiological differences or whatever is a form of discrimination.
Discrimination does not need to be overt. There is absolutely no basis
to claim that women are less capable due to biological  differences as
this has been shown many times to be wrong (in fact some studies find
females perform better than males in many academic areas including
maths).

We dont want to tell you what to think, but just for your interest,
your way of thinking is the kind of discrimination earlier posters
have referred to.

Michael.

On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 10:54 PM, Eyal Lebedinsky<eyal at eyal.emu.id.au> wrote:
> Adam Thomas wrote:
>>
>> 2009/9/10 Eyal Lebedinsky <eyal at eyal.emu.id.au>:
>
> [trim]
>>>
>>> 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.
>>
>> I don't think its the physicality of the gender differences that
>> causes this phenomenon. I believe it is largely due to the way society
>> treats the different genders.
>
> I very much disagree, I consider the differences more gender driven
> than societal attitude. Much more nature than nurture.
>
>>> What do I want women to bring to FOSS? Same as from anyone else: whatever
>>> you enjoy and are good at. Play to your strengths.
>>>
>>> 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.
>>
>> I don't want to encourage women participating in FOSS more than I want
>> encourage men participating in FOSS. I just want more people
>> participating in FOSS. I will promote FOSS to whom ever will listen,
>> regardless of their physicality or background.
>
> Yes, me too.
>
>> There is still a large number of existing FOSS community members who
>> discourage women from joining or continuing to participate in the
>> community.
>
> I failed to see these 'large numbers', but then I probably do not go
> out enough to see what is going on.
>
>> I doubt there are many people actively attempting to
>>
>> discourage women from participating but more often than not manage to
>> do so by accident.  Some handle this well by apologising and moving
>> on, others handle it poorly and end up putting more fuel on the fire.
>>
>> What I want, is for the community to not discourage anyone from
>> participating in FOSS. It has been identified that there is a
>> significant amount of discouragement felt by women. They are the
>> greasy wheel getting the grease. If we can educate those who
>> discourage women, hopefully we can also educate those who discourage
>> other minorities.
>
> And I still do not see those doing the discouragement.
>
> I want to mention another aspect of the FOSS community that is known but
> maybe not highlighted. Some the those male-geek groups are actually
> intentionally for men (boys, whatever). This is the equivalent of other
> kinds of male bonding activities, and in this context women are excluded,
> and rightly so (not all teen-geek groups are like this though). Just the
> same as women will want their own girls night out (or whatever women do
> for bonding). Some of us may have started in such activities before
> moving out into the FOSS world.
>
> One should not confuse this with the general FOSS community which is
> gender neutral (even if not equally represented). At times I hear people
> refer to such geek/hacker/whatever culture in the same breath as the FOSS
> culture; this is wrong.
>
>>> 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)
>
> cheers
>
> --
> Eyal Lebedinsky (eyal at eyal.emu.id.au)
> --
> linux mailing list
> linux at lists.samba.org
> https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/linux
>