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Yet another male perspective on women in free softwareYet another male perspective on women in free softwarePosted Oct 4, 2007 4:34 UTC (Thu) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047)Parent article: Yet another male perspective on women in free software
Excellent post on the matter, sir. I think you summed up the problem quite nicely.
One would think that a community made up of a large number of people who have themselves been
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The most important problem was omitted entirely - from article and you reasoning too Posted Oct 4, 2007 6:27 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] People who have themselves been rejected by and excluded from wider society, in many cases, at a young age, would be more tolerant and welcoming of people. The biggest question is: why should they ? They were ostracized and rejected for years - mostly because they lack the tact and ignore insignificant things like "manners". Finally, after many years, blood and tears they created place where they belong. Where they can be unapologetically "hostile to people who seem to be unwilling to think or to do their own homework before asking questions", where they can "tell exactly how you screwed up, possibly with colourful asides" and do it "in public". Now some newcomers want to destroy their "safe haven" and force them to welcome the very same "normal" people who have rejected them years ago and repeatedly reject them again and again. Why should they do this ? Why ? Who can guarantee that after more normal people will join geeks will not ostracized here, on their home turn and will not be expeled again ? Not to mention absorbing bad cultural messages. That's how the whole story of geekdom often starts, so it's not a coincidence... Women are just more social and so more often then not are "normal" people, not "geeks". FOSS communities don't just reject women specifically - they reject all normal people who are insisting on using manners and tact in conversations. Note that most older geeks can and do wear masks of "politeness" and "good manners" - when they are forced too. But the idea that they'll be forced to wear the same mask on the home turf Outrageous. As long as geeks perceive all these initiatives as yet-another-way-to-drive-them-from-home - we'll go nowhere. The people who drive women away are afraid, very afraid - they don't want to wear straitjacket and preventively fight against such horrible outcome. If we can not assuage their fears - it's all pointless.
The most important problem was omitted entirely - from article and you reasoning too Posted Oct 4, 2007 9:41 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] All I can say is that as someone who was rejected in exactly the way you describe, you do not speak for me. Not at all.
Being hostile to people simply is not a good thing, *no matter how badly we may ourselves have been treated in the past*, and especially not if you're being hostile to people who have not themselves been nasty to you at any time before.
The most important problem was omitted entirely - from article and you reasoning too Posted Oct 4, 2007 18:06 UTC (Thu) by rickmoen (subscriber, #6943) [Link] Please pardon the interjection:"khim's" quotation about hackers' tendency to be "hostile to people who seem to be unwilling to think or to do their own homework before asking questions" (taken from "How to Ask Questions the Smart Way") was one of my co-author Eric's, not one of mine, but if you read the surrounding passage, please note that "hostile" in this context denotes only either ignoring the question entirely or pointing out that it's poorly framed and unlikely to be fruitful. Resulting feedback to one's badly framed query may be blunt and brusque to the point that it seems rude (and, hey, in all honesty, it might also be rude), but it's almost always an interpretation error to read it as personal hostility. Rick Moen
The most important problem was omitted entirely - from article and you reasoning too Posted Oct 16, 2007 16:34 UTC (Tue) by einhverfr (guest, #44407) [Link] However, there is a difference between a comment like: "I don't know off the top of my head, but you might have better luck on the pgsql-perform list" and "The pgsql-perform is the right place for these queries. Next time, please review the list descriptions before deciding where to email your question." (In fairness to the PostgreSQL folks, their lists are the most helpful I have seen anywhere.) I have been on lists where there have been quite hostile people who throw personal attacks for no real reason (OSI's License-Discuss comes to mind). And in general what is missing is an involved list owner who is willing to take some of the work on shepharding the conversation (this doesn't mean heavy-handed moderation, just someone who people respect to remind people when they are outside the bounds of what is beneficial on the list).
The most important problem was omitted entirely - from article and you reasoning too Posted Oct 4, 2007 9:55 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] Free software communities reject all normal people who insist on manners and tact in conversations? WTF? Do you have any examples?
You can find samples in the other threads. Posted Oct 4, 2007 12:36 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] You only need few such guys in a mailing list to drive "normal" people away. Take a look on drobbins story is you want example. Ciaranm is technically brilliant jerk here - so Gentoo developers were not ready to send him away and continue without his help. Thus few "normal" people (if you even can call Daniel normal) were driven away. I'm not saying all FOSS developers have such ideas ingrained. But few (may be even very few - it does not matter) of them certainly do - and if others choose them over "normal" people (and that's quite often the case) then "normal" people (including women) will be driven away.
The most important problem was omitted entirely - from article and you reasoning too Posted Oct 4, 2007 11:16 UTC (Thu) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link] You mean well. Yet you shoot yourself in the foot squarely.
The article is about avoiding driving away participants by being flat-out rude, or whatever.
Then you go on grossly stereotyping a whole lot of people in a way that I personally find offensive. Mind you, I have *got* thick skin, so I'm not driven away by it. But I am annoyed.
You stereotype male OSS-participators as being "ostracized and rejected for years", a stereotype that never applied to all of us, indeed I strongly suspect it doesn't even apply for the majority.
You go on to compound that by claiming this is because we "lack tact" and "ignore manners". I don't recognize myself in either of these characterisations either, and suspect it's the kind of thing you -wouldn't- say to anyones face.
You then claim, indirectly, that FOSS communities generally "reject all normal people who are insisting on using manners and tact", another gross insult. I don't feel this fits even aproximately to most FOSS-communities I've been and are involved in, including Lwn.net. The debate here is a schoolbook example of tact and tone compared to, say, the debate on dagbladet.no one of the biggest online newspapers in norway...
As if that wasn't enough, you then go on to claim that in general, women are "more social". Did you ever consider that if it's sexist to make general statements *negative* towards women, then it's equally sexist to do the reverse ? If it's unacceptable and insulting to generally state that, for example, women are less technically competent, why is it then OK to state, like you just did, that men are less socially competent ?
I'm in favor of normal politeness in general (though not in favor of putting politeness above truth in general), but please, if that's what you're preaching: atleast consider following your own advice.
I wonder how it's possible to misread it so bad... Posted Oct 4, 2007 13:22 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] You stereotype male OSS-participators as being "ostracized and rejected for years", a stereotype that never applied to all of us, indeed I strongly suspect it doesn't even apply for the majority. Please explain to me where I've talked about majority of FOSS developers. I've explicitly talked about "people who have themselves been rejected by and excluded from wider society, in many cases, at a young age". And only about them. If you want full story... It applies to may be 3-5% of FOSS developers. May be even less. It's enough. It's more then enough. The story goes this way: You go on to compound that by claiming this is because we "lack tact" and "ignore manners". Yup. The people in question often lack tact and ignore manners. True. Again: where have I said that all people in FOSS lack tact and ignore manners ? I don't recognize myself in either of these characterisations either, and suspect it's the kind of thing you -wouldn't- say to anyones face. To the person who indeed lacks tact and ignore manners ? In a heartbeat. They will not understand any allegories. You then claim, indirectly, that FOSS communities generally "reject all normal people who are insisting on using manners and tact", another gross insult. It may be insult, but it's a fact. I do not say it's what FOSS communities are trying to do. It's the end result. Did you ever consider that if it's sexist to make general statements *negative* towards women, then it's equally sexist to do the reverse ? Is it sexist to agree with what women themselves say ? The women who are less social then average (rare as they are) are participating in FOSS already. If it's unacceptable and insulting to generally state that, for example, women are less technically competent, why is it then OK to state, like you just did, that men are less socially competent ? It's acceptable and not insulting to say the truth. Women are less technically competent in average and men are less socially competent in average. We can try to change this and make women more technically competent and men more socially competent and may be in the future situation will change, but right it's how things stay. I'm in favor of normal politeness in general (though not in favor of putting politeness above truth in general), but please, if that's what you're preaching: atleast consider following your own advice. Who said I preach this ? I just explain what all these "let's make FOSS communities more comfortable for women" campaigns lack. I myself is perfectly happy with current situation, but if we truly do want to bring more women in FOSS then "jerks in FOSS" (yup - including me) must be weeded out or reformed. And to achieve this "the silent majority" must decide that it'd worth it and act accordingly. Note that these "jerks from FOSS" include a lot of high-profile guys (like Linus and RMS) so it'll not be easy.
I wonder how it's possible to misread it so bad... Posted Oct 4, 2007 18:23 UTC (Thu) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link] There's a problem. If females in general avoided all areas where 3-5% ("maybe even less") of the people are rude or otherwise behave in a way that you don't approve of, then there wouldn't be many human areas where women can participate.
Going to the disco ? Nope. Odds are a minority of the people there will behave rudely somehow.
Working ? Nope. Odds are you'll experience rude people. In some jobs with rather a lot of women in them, you need to interact with rather a -lot- of rude people.
Team sports of any kind ? Nope. Odds are you'll be "driven away" there too.
Go on vacation to oh, say, italy ? No chance. You'll *certainly* suffer regular sexist remarks and stupid pickup attempts regularily.
Play in a band ? No chance in hell, are you dreaming ?
The women I know participate in all of these, and more though. So clearly, your map fails to match the actual terrain. If the bar for getting more women to participate is eradicating every last rude person, then frankly, that's not doable in any forum, certainly not one that is open and tolerant. You can do it if you're say dictator over a mailing-list, but that then tends to mean driving away the large majority of free-speech loving hackers (of which there are, frankly, more than there are female hackers)
I don't see jerks getting any more support in FLOSS communities than elsewhere. There's lots of VERY jerky people tolerated in team-sports for example, if they're good in sports.
It's not a "FACT" that FLOSS-communities in general have the effect you claim they have. Some may. Too many may, even. But there's a step from that (and a large one) to claiming they do in general.
There's a difference, by the way, between claiming that women/men are -on-the-average- more/less technically skilled and claiming that women/men are more/less technically skilled. The first only claims to deal with averages, the second is a general statement, and is -untrue- unless it fits for all women/men. (or atleast close)
In short -- I don't think your core idea: that the low female participation can be explained to a large degree trough having 3-5% ("maybe even less") of participants that are socially maladapted is sound. I don't think that even comes close to explaining anything.
I do agree it's a cultural thing, though. But it's the culture of the majority, in AND OUTSIDE of floss, not the work of a few isolated guys.
I also just plain don't see the claimed distinction between FLOSS communities and say professional software development. It's possible that part genuinely is different in the USA though.
Not just the trolls' fault Posted Oct 5, 2007 17:33 UTC (Fri) by wilck (subscriber, #29844) [Link] Very good point. Women are used to experience rudeness and sexism in almost every area of society. Whether or not that drives women away is a function of how attractive the activity itself is. Work, for example, isn't easy to avoid, and (using your example) discos attract more women than FLOSS forums.
I agree that rudeness itself is not the main problem. However, if someone is being rude, the reactions of the others matter a lot - it's good if many participants express their dissent. Otherwise, it's natural for the victim to interpret the silence as consent, and, consequently, feel attacked by the community as a whole.
What else? Besides the trolls, there's less evident sexism in the behavior of the majority of FLOSS participants. It's probably harder for female contributors to get appreciation for their work, and get respected as a hacker, not a woman in the first place.
Even that disregarded - it's possible that the resasons why people participate in our community simply don't appeal much to women.
Not just the trolls' fault Posted Oct 11, 2007 8:43 UTC (Thu) by forthy (guest, #1525) [Link] desire for the rewards the meritocracy has to offer One note here about women being "more social": This stereotype is only seeing one part of the picture. The stereotypical "social" woman tries to generate "harmony" in the society she's in. Problems are avoided, solutions tend to be compromises. Women prefer to share work equally, i.e. in a round-robin scheme, or everybody sits together and does the same thing. Our ape ancestors also have different hierarchies: Female apes have their position in the hierarchy by how long they have been in the group, and who was their mother. Female chimps can only raise in hierarchy when some upper female dies or is driven out of the group (female social monkeys regularly change groups, mostly at young age, for better genetic diversity, but they have to start at the bottom of the hierarchy ladder there). Male apes fight for their position in the hierarchy. Female chimps often do all they can to calm down these fights (by lousing the males), and sometimes, they reject the winner of a fight if he was to jerky. As a consequence, a meritocracy is something alien to women. The stereotypical "social" man lives in a different social system. His male society rewards fights, because you can change your position in hierarchy. Work is shared by dividing it into different portions - the typical male specialist teamwork. Territories are guarded and protected. This is all social behavior, but it's different from female social behavior. Now, these are all stereotypes, the human being is very adaptive, and can change behavior much more than chimps or macaques. However, when we talk about sexism, the allegedly typical "male" unsocial behavior (alleged by women) isn't unsocial. It's just not "female" social behavior, it's different. It has different tradeoffs, and needs different environments to work out. We see that how over time boys and girls have different success rates in coed school systems. Some decades ago, competitive behavior was rewarded, and boys were generally better. Now, being cooperate with the teacher is rewarded, and girls are generally better, while boys are perceived more as "troublemakers". In a mostly male environment, like FLOSS development, we see a lot of stereotypical male social behavior. People fight over things, people specialize, and fence their territories. If you want to have a case study, look at the staircase scheduler vs. CFS. Ingo is the territory owner (he wrote the O(1) scheduler). Con is an outsider. There are valid technical considerations why CFS got in finally, but during the years before CFS was written, the situation was quite different. Before, it was typical male ape (human jerk) social behavior. Regardless if this will attract more women or not: We ought to change that. Fencing territories is not the right thing to do in FLOSS. Specializing and dividing work into different portions is welcome. Competition is fine, dog-fights aren't. Social is what's adequate to the problems of a group. It's not always nature which gives us the most adequate social behavior - neither men nor women have the right social behavior for modern society in there genes. That's what we have our large brains for.
Not just the trolls' fault Posted Oct 16, 2007 4:34 UTC (Tue) by einhverfr (guest, #44407) [Link] A lot o your complaints really are aimed at a dictator model or similar model, You can see Linux kernel development as following an almost military structure (Linus as general, his Liutenants, etc. all the way down to the common foot-coder). Which is their choice. LedgerSMB (my main project) took a very different approach, based in part on the PostgreSQL community. We have a core development team (6 members) which make decisions about infrastructure, project direction, release milestones, etc. THen there is a larger number of people with commit access, and an even larger number of people who submit patches via Sourceforge. We are organized more like a Greek city-state than like an army. Although most areas of the core team have taken lead roles in various areas, some specialize more than others. One guy does mostly db stuff. Another guy has been a strong reference of Perl language, another member is a lead on application security, and I am the lead on accounting logic. Interestingy, only a few people really heavily specialize in a small area of the software and most people are involved in everything. I will point out a few things that should be obvious: 1) Territorial theories (about men being more territorial) are misapplied. Everyone will defend his/her territory, but men and women do this differently. 2) Everyone, men and women alike, want to feel like valued community members. Gender doesn't change that. 3) different people have different talents and may want to contribute differently. Anyway, I am looking heavily at questions of open source community management. I may start to put my findings together into a whitepaper of sorts.
Fundamentally disagree Posted Oct 16, 2007 4:07 UTC (Tue) by einhverfr (guest, #44407) [Link] First, the very fact that we are asking "why aren't there more women involved in FOSS" is a part of the problem. I may be male, but I hear a *common* complaint from women in FOSS that they are constantly asked that question. My grandmother was a physicist and she felt the same way. So by making an issue of it, we create a problem. Point 1: Don't let gender matter. A second point is that there are a *lot* of badly run FOSS projects out there (SQL-Ledger comes to mind...) where the main developer actively drives away would-be contributors because he (I don't know of any female cases off the top of my head) doesn't want competition. Point 2: Many equal, competent, and talented voices are better than one. Have a core community which debates, deliberates, and decides core project issues. If you must go with a dictatorship model, do what Linus did and stay away from commercial involvement. Finally, every piece of software lives or dies based on community. This community is three tiered: Core management, contributors and advocates, and users. Focus aggressively on building the community an make all contributors feel welcome. Point 3: Community is what matters most. Make the most of it. I seriously think that if we start looking at every individual as someone who can get involved and benefit both him/herself and the community by doing so, the question will become meaningless and it will correct itself.
Female jerks Posted Oct 6, 2007 10:41 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Not to speak about the possible existence of "female jerks" who have been rejected and ostracized by everyone, just as "male jerks"; and who are technically brilliant. Do they just not behave as "jerks" at all? Or are there subclasses of "jerks"?At my university I saw a lot of socially inept people (including me). We did not participate in social events while in high school, we did not get invited to parties, and yet we were not any more or less rude than the rest. We (men and women alike) were just worse at being social, something which has almost always been corrected in adult life.
I wonder how it's possible to misread it so bad... Posted Oct 16, 2007 4:47 UTC (Tue) by einhverfr (guest, #44407) [Link] With all due respect, I think that you grossly miss the point. In most communities, I have seen maybe 0.1-1% of users be obnoxious. The result of that has very little to do with how many obnoxious people you have on your forums and email lists, but rather what positons in the community they hold. If they are in positions of power, or are essentially attack dogs for those in power, they can do a *lot* of damage by driving away talent of both genders. If they are largely ignored by the community, or are generally reminded of manners, then they do very little damage (and may actually serve to provide a contrast showing how good the rest of the community is). Secondly, the howto you cite also tends to miss the point. As long as we try too hard to attract women in computing, and make a big deal out of it, we are going to have problems with inequality. The howto makes a number of points which are valid, but I think the overall premise is flawed. Basically (as a male) I think that the best way to encourage women in computing and FOSS, is to work primarily on the architectures of contribution and community in general so that all participants feel welcome and valued for what they contribute. This is a real challenge, but it is the oly way to address the real questions and callenges that this matter brings up.
The most important problem was omitted entirely - from article and you reasoning too Posted Oct 7, 2007 1:10 UTC (Sun) by malor (subscriber, #2973) [Link] You have become the people that rejected you; the abused have become the abusers.
The most important problem was omitted entirely - from article and you reasoning too Posted Oct 7, 2007 2:31 UTC (Sun) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link] They were ostracized because they lacked manners? It's polite to beat up on people so many times that you have to beg your victim to downplay the incident so you don't get kicked out of school? (Yeah, that happened to me.) This illusion that those who were willing to fight for a high rung on the social ladder are somehow better behaved, more open to outsiders or more tactful is absurd. Fraternities, for example, are closed societies notorious for bad behavior, routinely drunkenness and sexual harassment, but up to and including assault, rape and manslaughter. And somehow not a geek to be seen...
The most important problem was omitted entirely - from article and you reasoning too Posted Oct 16, 2007 16:27 UTC (Tue) by einhverfr (guest, #44407) [Link] A couple of things: I think the more important the individual is in the community the more that public discussion over merits is important. For example, I have had various people tell me exactly what I did that was stupid in public (both by men and by women). Most of the time I listen, learn, and appreciate the honesty. This is especially true for communities where I have some sort of leadership position. However, for newcommers, I tend to go out of my way to provide guidance without being harsh. Usually comments like "this would be better asked on a different list" are followed by "here is a quick overview." I tend to do the same when directing people to the documentation (some people *have* looked in the documentation and don't know how to get answers from that-- and yes, sometimes it happens to me). Finally, there is such a thing as criticism overload. I have watched it happen to lots of people (men and women). Especially when you work with refavtoring *horrible* codebases, it happens. Look for it in yourself and watch for it in others.
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