Posted Jun 14, 2006 23:42 UTC (Wed) by newren (subscriber, #5160)
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The pay is at the exact same rate as the Google Summer of Code ($1500/month), it's just for two months instead of three (The $9000 mentioned in the article is the aggregate -- there are only enough funds for three people). In fact, I think the article even pointed that out.
And how exactly do men have a much lower chance of getting accepted?
I for one, strongly applaud this effort, and in particular Chris Ball and Hanna Wallach for taking the initiative and getting this thing rolling.
The GNOME Women's Summer Outreach Program
Posted Jun 14, 2006 23:48 UTC (Wed) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216)
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I believe he was saying that any individual male applicant to the regular SOC would have a lower chance of acceptance because of the higher total number of applicants, whereas the (anticipated) low number of female applicants to this program would have less competition and thus a better chance of acceptance.
The GNOME Women's Summer Outreach Program
Posted Jun 15, 2006 2:01 UTC (Thu) by newren (subscriber, #5160)
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There were 20 accepted positions for Gnome in the Google SOC. There will only be 3 for this program. I guess it depends on the total number that apply as to whether someone had better odds in being accepted in the former or the latter and all we can do is guess at this point, but my personal guess is that the odds aren't much different. :)
The GNOME Women's Summer Outreach Program
Posted Jun 15, 2006 8:22 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
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I would expect that if your a female programming student that's about all it would take. Unless they have more then 3 show up.
All in all I don't mind. The summer of code is a pure public relations stuff so there is no such thing or realy any point to be fair about stuff.
It's not like some sort of government mandated quota system based on race or sex... :-)
The GNOME Women's Summer Outreach Program
Posted Jun 19, 2006 13:36 UTC (Mon) by occ (guest, #38482)
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"And how exactly do men have a much lower chance of getting accepted?"
Since they are not allowed to apply their chance is exactly 0.
On the other hand the 'real' SoC was open to everybody without consideration of sex or color, so the chance of women or men to be accepted were equal (we are going to assume that Gnome did not discriminate against women and then turn around and announce an Affirmative Action program)
So everall, with this scheme, the 'chance' of a given individual is lower if he is male.
Now there is SoC, the Open version, and SoC the 'dumbed down' version....
The GNOME Women's Summer Outreach Program
Posted Jun 14, 2006 23:52 UTC (Wed) by iabervon (subscriber, #722)
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It looks like this is paying less money total, slightly less per month ($3000 for 2 months instead of $5000 for 3 months), and comes out of money for work that nobody of either gender applied for. Unless I'm missing something, the program only open to women is less money and has a lower chance of existing at all. Of course, women could apply for both, getting a higher chance overall, but none actually did, so that hardly matters. (I'm reading the "$9000 for women" as implying that they have funding for three applications, each earning the $3000 stipend specified.)
The GNOME Women's Summer Outreach Program
Posted Jun 15, 2006 2:02 UTC (Thu) by newren (subscriber, #5160)
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Google pays $5000 for 3 months, but only $4500 of it goes to the applicant while the other $500 goes to the relevant open source group. Thus, the pay rate individuals receive in either program is the same.
The GNOME Women's Summer Outreach Program
Posted Jun 14, 2006 23:53 UTC (Wed) by Zack (guest, #37335)
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> So men get less money for the same job
I wouldn't say that. "Hackers who feel their gender is not relevant get less money for the same job" is more accurate.
I would think that Free Software is a field of work with one of the lowest tresholds of entry. GPLed code usually has no gender and no colour, just technical merit.
It's harder for favortism to exist in free software circles where are maintainer must usually give a satisfying technical reason to his peers for refusing patches.
I'm uncertain about whether it is beneficial to introduce the gender dichotomy into Free Software development because it seemed to be doing pretty well without it.
I can see the benefits of the point of view that almost 50% of potential contributors remains untapped and should be capitalized upon.
But that feels too much like marketing.
Freedom of no existing preconception of ones work is a freedom too. One that is strongly ingrained in Free Software culture already.
Introducing an artificial split in what is in essence a single group of which the individuals' other interests can differ a lot further from eachother than just gender can be distracting.
On the other hand. Perhaps a period of special highlighting can the pique the interest of unaware soon-to-be contributors after which they will realize that they too can be genderless.
The GNOME Women's Summer Outreach Program
Posted Jun 15, 2006 0:19 UTC (Thu) by dang (subscriber, #310)
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Now look at the real world:
Look at http://www.cra.org/info/education/us/ and the splits for BS, MS, and PhD in the US by gender. It had been a 2:1 split but now it is more like 3:1. But even then, you don't see anywhere near a 33% ratio of women contributing to the open source commons.
Interesting because this is at a time when more and more women and fewer and fewer men are going to Univeristy in the US.
So there are two broad areas of concern:
a) Some set of forces continue to filter women away from CS and are in fact doing so at an accellerating rate
b) Of the talented women not so filtered, something is filtereing them away from contributing code to open source projects.
And regarding "being generless," my advice is that one takes this approach at one's peril ( at least until societies stop relentlessly gender training ). As long as gender categorizations do social work, we need to be aware of what work they are doing. They can do clearly bad work ( e.g., discrimination ) but they can also, by differentially training people, lead to different sets of experiences and inference, at which point you want to see how those different experiences and patterns of inference can lead to helpful insight. This is why it is at least interesting to study people like Barbara McClintock from the perspective of gender.
The GNOME Women's Summer Outreach Program
Posted Jun 15, 2006 7:42 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
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It had been a 2:1 split but now it is more like 3:1. But even then, you don't see anywhere near a 33% ratio of women contributing to the open source commons.
At the university I'd attented, the male-female ratio was around 10:1 at the CS faculty. Maybe it's specific to Hungary, but I've heard that the situation is similar at the other universities. Of course, at the human faculties, the male-female ratio is around 1:10 (e.g. I've had only one male language teacher, the other 8 were female). And it isn't created by sexism, girls doesn't seem to be interested in gadgets, while boys doesn't seems to be interested in learning things by heart.
Bye,NAR
The GNOME Women's Summer Outreach Program
Posted Jun 16, 2006 8:21 UTC (Fri) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183)
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The university I went to five years ago in Australia had on paper a really good ratio, maybe 2:1 or better. You'd think great, except all these did the degree (and did it well, got good grades, etc) and then went and did HR work or website design or some such. Work in the IT industry but nowhere near programming. I don't recall any case of one of them actually going for a programming job.
It's a hard problem, I really don't know what the right solution is. In my years of interviewing applications for programmers, there really wern't very many women who applied.
The GNOME Women's Summer Outreach Program
Posted Jun 16, 2006 9:06 UTC (Fri) by Wol (guest, #4433)
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"And it isn't created by sexism, girls doesn't seem to be interested in gadgets"
Go read the "Women in Linux" faq (can't remember the proper name). You'll probably find it at linuxchix. Women are *driven* *away* from gadgets by mens' propensity to monopolise.
If you understand anything about female psychology (and I expect a lot of computer blokes don't - being above average on the Autistic Spectrum seems to be typical of them) you will understand why they don't get involved in programming.
Some simple stats from education. Maths and Physics are supposed to be boys subjects. In mixed schools, very few girls do those subject. So why, in the UK, have all-girl schools CONSISTENTLY topped the league tables in those subjects (typically taking four out of five top places every year!)
In "boys" subjects, girls do badly in the presence of boys. In the absence of boys, they outperform them. So what on earth are we doing to drive them away !?!?!?
Cheers,
Wol
The GNOME Women's Summer Outreach Program
Posted Jun 16, 2006 9:09 UTC (Fri) by Wol (guest, #4433)
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Oops. I should have said "in mixed schools, few girls do those subjects, and those that do tend to do badly".
Cheers,
Wol
The GNOME Women's Summer Outreach Program
Posted Jun 16, 2006 15:56 UTC (Fri) by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
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Women are *driven* *away* from gadgets by mens' propensity to monopolise.
I don't know. When I was 10 years old, the school got a couple of Commodore 16 computers and they've started a "computer class" for the pupils - but I can't remember that there were any girls who wanted to go to this class, so I can't see how were they driven away when they didn't want to join in the first place.
Bye,NAR
The GNOME Women's Summer Outreach Program
Posted Jun 14, 2006 23:56 UTC (Wed) by dang (subscriber, #310)
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This is how it works when one has to remove access barriers. Sorry if it harshes the view from the position of privilege, but it is really hard to read remediation as sexism.
The GNOME Women's Summer Outreach Program
Posted Jun 15, 2006 4:23 UTC (Thu) by jstAusr (guest, #27224)
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What access barriers? Maybe it has more to do with FLOSS (Freely Licensed Open Source Software) not being as high on the social status ladder. Its a society thing, not a gender thing.
The GNOME Women's Summer Outreach Program
Posted Jun 15, 2006 6:35 UTC (Thu) by k8to (subscriber, #15413)
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At the risk of further dragging out an uninteresting discussion, gender
comporises many things; biological, physical, chemical, developmental
aspects all take part, none of which will anyone dispute, I think.
Gender is also personal, it is also social. People are socialized into
their genders, and to ignore this misses part of the picture.
The GNOME Women's Summer Outreach Program
Posted Jun 16, 2006 9:20 UTC (Fri) by Wol (guest, #4433)
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Note that in his essays, ESR says one of the major rewards for FLOSS programmers is "egoboo". For most women, egoboo is not a reward ...