[clug] Equality (was Announcing: Canberra Google Girl Geek Dinner #3)

[Jack Kelly]

On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 10:05 AM, Francis Markham <fmarkham at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/9/11 Jack Kelly <endgame.dos at gmail.com>:
>> I read your post in terms of "lively debate", not "thread of doom", so
>> I hope we can continue at that level.
> Likewise :)
Good.

>> I don't know what the subscription stats are for this list, but let's
>> take your quoted figure of 1.5% for all of FOSS and disingenuously
>> apply it to the list.
>
> I agree that 1.5% is an arbitrary figure plucked from the linked
> article in the other thread.  I have no idea if it applies to this
> list.
Even if it does, the below comparison isn't logically sound. See previous post.

>> Given that the dinners appear to allow a single
>> guest, that's at most 3% of the list that is able to go to such an
>> event (also disingenuously assuming that all guests are only drawn
>> from the CLUG list). Posting an event where 97% of the people who see
>> the invite won't be allowed to go is a pretty nasty thing to do (to my
>> mind).
> You're probably not surprised to find that I disagree :)  I would hope
> that if CLUG members are serious about supporting women in FOSS (as
> per the other thread) they would recognise that events where women can
> meet to discuss issues facing 'girl geeks' are a good thing, and thus
> worthy of CLUG's support.
That's not my claim. I don't have a problem with the event in
principle. My claim was that posting the advertisement to the CLUG
list is accidentally an exclusive action instead of an inclusive one
because a significant percentage of the list audience is ineligible to
attend. Turns out I can't support that claim, anyway.

> What's more, I think a number of threads about women on list / in FOSS
> have demonstrated that the CLUG mailing list is generally not a very
> friendly place to hold these discussions.  Discussions of gender
> issues (for example, how to not offend women on list by assuming
> everyone is male) seem to inevitably degenerate into flame wars.
Why is that so? I'd prefer that the list doesn't dodge around certain
topics but instead learns how to debate without flaming.

> Thus the need for (off-list) functions of the type that Lana was
> advertising in order to gain/keep women in FOSS, a notion that CLUG
> members generally seem to support in principle.
My view is more "make very, very sure there's no accidental
barriers*", but I'd agree with you in that nobody wants to be
intentionally exclusive.

> Which is why we should be happy for these kind of advertisements to be
> posted on list.  Its no good saying "we want more women in FOSS" but
> they are not welcome to post about women in FOSS to the list, because
> they aren't many women on the list.
That's unsound: we don't post about Win32 development here because
it's not a list for that purpose, even for FOSS Win32 projects.

Ideal world: "Women in FOSS" is about as much of an issue as "people
born on Thursdays in FOSS".

As an example: a more inclusive post WRT women-in-FOSS would be
announcing a CLUG meeting where several people (mostly women, and I'm
thinking of Lana in particular, since this issue is obviously
important to her) give talks about their experiences of gender bias in
FOSS.

So should the advertisements continue? Judging by Andrew Boyd's
observation and the off-list reply I mentioned earlier, it seems that
word-of-mouth to off-list females is important to the attendance rate,
so perhaps yes.

> Disclaimer: This is not a personal criticism of Jack or anyone in
> particular, but more of a structural issue.  I hope it is read as it
> is intended.
It is :-).

I'm leaving this discussion for a while, on the grounds that it's
already eaten most of my morning and I do need to get work done.

-- Jack

* It should go without saying that intentional barriers are pretty
dumb, but in case it doesn't...