[clug] Open Source Software's Dirty Little Secret

[Daniel Pittman]

Brendan Jurd <direvus at gmail.com> writes:
> 2009/9/10 Lana Brindley <lanabrindley at gmail.com>:
>
>> If you're not interested in promoting women's involvement in Open source,
>> or if you think that women don't belong in IT, please don't click on the
>> link.
>
> I don't fall into either of the above categories but I do have trouble
> accepting this idea that open source is "sexist" or that there's a "dirty
> little secret".

When I first started out learning about this I found it very, very instructive
to carry out little social experiments to test this sort of thing out.

One thing you might find interesting is to ask the people you know, in the
FOSS and IT areas, about that specifically:

    "Do you think that FOSS / IT discriminates against women?"

The answers are really quite instructive.[1]

You might also find this useful:
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Resources_for_men


> Until these CLUG threads started showing up, I hadn't given much thought to
> the lack of women in FOSS, so I'm fairly new to this topic.

I am almost tempted to say sorry: this is one of those things that you can't
really unlearn, and it isn't really very nice.


> I grew up playing video games, programming, reading comic books, playing
> Games Workshop games and tabletop RPGs.  I encountered very few girls
> interested in any of those hobbies, and the situation hasn't changed.

No.  A possible consideration: look at the roles and images of women in these
hobbies, as you engage in them.

It fairly quickly becomes obvious, especially if you keep notes, that almost
every one of those (excluding programming, for now) depicts women in pretty
unpleasant ways.


> I just got used to the idea that my nerdy hobbies were not appealling to
> females for some reason.
>
> When I added FOSS to my list of hobbies, there were hardly any women there
> either.  I didn't find it surprising -- and given prior experience, why
> would I?

*nod*  Welcome to privilege, population us.  On the plus side, the fact that
you can recognise that is a *HUGE* thing, and you should be pretty proud of
it.  Most people go through life completely oblivious to this sort of obvious
fact.


> The article dismisses the "lack of interest" angle by pointing out that the
> ratio of females in proprietary software is much higher.  But as one of the
> commenters observed, you can't draw a direct comparison between interest in
> paid work and interest in a hobby.  A lot of people are willing to do jobs
> that they aren't passionate about, especially if the pay is good.

It is instructive to go look at the history of computing, and find out how
many women were involved back when there was *nothing* but a "passion", and
the pay wasn't there.

[...]

> The 1.5% figure that has been bandied about lately is presented as being
> shockingly low, and damning evidence of some kind of rampant sexism or
> systemic defect in FOSS.  But to be honest it matches up pretty tidily with
> my experiences with other geeky hobbies.  If you told me that only 1.5% of
> Warhammer 40K players are female, I'd shrug and say that sounds about right.
> Maybe even a little high.  Would you expect to find 1.5% female attendance
> at a LAN party?  What about a Dungeons & Dragons session?
>
> So when I hear that only 1.5% of FOSS contributors are female, I'm not
> shocked or outraged.  I'm long since resigned to it and I suspect a lot of
> FOSS contributors are in the same boat.  Would I like there to be more women
> interested in my hobbies?  Most certainly!  Of course I would.  It's a
> bummer that they are total sausage fests.  But I just don't see how that
> would change without some massive paradigm shifts in society generally.

This is one of those common, and insidious, statements.  It is also, I fear to
say, one that has a cookie-cutter response because it comes up so often.

First: you are right.  This *is* hard to change without a paradigm shift in
society in general.  That is true, and that is a *HUGE* thing to happen.

Second: you can't do this all on your own, and neither can anyone else.


Now, the cookie cutter part:

Yes, this takes a paradigm shift in society in general.  So, are you going to
use that as a lazy excuse to do nothing?

That paradigm shift starts with you, and me, and other individual people being
willing to stand up and say "I will do a little bit."


So: what can you do that will help change society?

More importantly: what *WILL* you do that will help change society?

        Daniel


Footnotes: 
[1]  I do warn you, though, that if you start doing this you may find yourself
     in the uncomfortable position of looking at the people around you and
     wondering which cesspool they get their ideas from...  The outcome can be
     quite ... unpleasant.

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