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Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really??Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really??Posted Aug 26, 2009 23:51 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)In reply to: Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? by mjg59 Parent article: FSF to host a mini-summit on Women in Free Software For argument's sake, I can ask whether women are less interested in Linux and Amateur Radio, and say yes from the evidence I have on hand, unless you'd like to propose another mechanism that works to keep them out with extremely high efficiency. You could propose a more representative sample of Free Software participants than the LWN subscription roles. There are many projects, mailing lists, etc., that you can scan for participation of women. Good luck showing that more women participate that way, I'll be astonished if you do. Or you could propose a cause other than interest.
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Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 27, 2009 0:01 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] For argument's sake, I can ask whether women are less interested in Linux and Amateur Radio, and say yes from the evidence I have on handYou can ask that, yes. It's still not a supportable supposition. You can't make statements about the general population if your evidence is based on a non-random subset of that population. Ever. Identifying why there's such a small percentage of women involved requires spending time talking to the women who aren't as well as looking at the number who are. (I should possibly point out that I have a fairly reasonable set of experience in statistical analysis, experiment design and criticism of unsupported conclusions, including teaching that at the undergrad level)
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 27, 2009 1:50 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] If you're going to insist on that high standard, it has to apply to you too. Upon what scientific basis do you claim that RMS' statement was harmful?
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 27, 2009 2:40 UTC (Thu) by maco (guest, #53641) [Link]
At least one woman at Wikimania expressed discomfort with his joke, according to Kirrily Robert: http://geekfeminism.org/2009/08/25/quick-hit-rms-at-wikim...
I would think the number of responses listed on the Geek Feminism Wikiato when he said it at GCDS would show that at least a handful of us were put off by the statement.
Now, I wasn't there. If I was, though? "Ugh, why do they always assume all the geeks are guys? *roll eyes*" The issue with assuming and perpetuating the assumption that we don't exist is that it creates an atmosphere where some [asshole] male developers think they are well within subcultural norms to say some pretty nasty things to female developers (when they encounter them). Things that include telling us we don't exist, crediting the men we are in relationships with for our successes, assuming we must be there to get picked up by male developers since we're obviously not there to be developers ourselves...
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 27, 2009 4:15 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] I'm not doubting that. I'm just haranguing Matt for telling me that I can't do any science with the sample I have.
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 27, 2009 8:12 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
There exist people who were present at his GCDS keynote and were offended by his statement.
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 27, 2009 19:13 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] Yes. But by your standards this is anecdotal evidence.
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 27, 2009 21:43 UTC (Thu) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]
Out of curiosity, are you more interested in being right, or in winning a pissing match with Matt?
(I actually disagree with Matt -- I think your data is fine for showing that women are rare in FOSS and ham radio. You don't need more data. The problem is that you want to conclude from this that the reason they are rare is that they're uninterested. For that you need *different* data. Like data that tells you something about why they are rare, or whether they are interested. There's lots of that available, including stuff written by Real Scientists, and we even did the googling for you. It doesn't support your conclusion. In the mean time, in this game you're playing about which evidence you have to listen to, you're denying that it matters that actual, individual people were actually, in reality, hurt.)
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 27, 2009 23:02 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] I just wanted to point out to him that he is not arguing under the same rules he demands of me.What googling? I didn't see anything dealing with technical volunteerism. I submit that there are differences between this and technical employment.
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 28, 2009 1:31 UTC (Fri) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link] I just wanted to point out to him that he is not arguing under the same rules he demands of me.Yes, I understand that. I'm not convinced you're right -- he's explained why -- but I was responding to the fact that in choosing to make that point, and in the way you did, you communicate that you're more worried about the rules than the actual content of the discussion; indeed, that you're willing to deny the relevance of real people's pain in order to score a point. ("These intellectual, clever, engaged men want to endlessly probe my argument for weaknesses, want to wrestle over details, want to argue just for fun—and they wonder, these intellectual, clever, engaged men, why my voice keeps raising and why my face is flushed..." There may be a reason that it's mostly men who have been willing to *cough* volunteer to discuss this with you?) What googling? I didn't see anything dealing with technical volunteerismI was referring to the copious links I gave earlier, all of which deal with FOSS specifically (i.e., not proprietary software development, though they don't *avoid* the broader issues); the FLOSSPOLS work in particular should satisfy any demands for scientific rigor.
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 28, 2009 4:41 UTC (Fri) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] I rejected Matt's effort to shut down my discussion with scientific standards that he would not accept himself. I have every right to contest such rhetorical trickery.I have already explained that to do so was not meant to deny anyone's pain, but to point out to Matt that by his standards he could not make any statements from the data either. Now that there are women contributing to the discussion, you might do better to let them speak for themselves.
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 29, 2009 11:15 UTC (Sat) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]
> I have every right to contest such rhetorical trickery.
I agree, and have never claimed otherwise. You have every right to say whatever you want.
I was pointing out that the things you chose to say were, perhaps, problematic, and that choosing to exercise your right in that way might be causing collateral harm in order to pursue a (relatively) trivial point. When I do things like that, I like to be informed -- not because I'm worried that I'll overrun my rights and get arrested or something (?), but because I generally prefer not to be an accidental asshole. It isn't necessarily a big deal in this instance, but there was an underlying principle there that I thought you might want to have pointed out.
> I have already explained that to do so was not meant to deny anyone's pain,
I heard that, and I appreciate it. But should I therefore not point out the problem? If I punch someone in the nose, and it was an accident, then 1) their nose is still broken, 2) they may be legitimately unimpressed if I say "oh well but my intention was good!", 3) I'm still responsible.
Again, I don't need an apology or something. (I can't, of course, speak for others either way.) But you've used your good intentions as a defense several times on this page, and so again, it's a general principle you might want to consider.
> Now that there are women contributing to the discussion, you might do better to let them speak for themselves.
I speak for myself, about things that I see and believe. Certainly I don't mean to co-opt or silence any women in doing so. Nor do I see evidence that they think I have. I've seen two comments from women about my participation here: Liz Henry said I "rock"[1]. Skud said that one of my comments described "*exactly* why [she hadn't] dived until this thread until now"[2]. (Ironically, she was talking about my explanation[3] of why your demanding to talk to a woman was uncool, with the links I referred to above.)
So far, you're the only one who's objected. If people -- esp. women -- find my contributions problematic then I'll absolutely listen. But perhaps you should let them speak for themselves?
[1] http://lwn.net/Articles/349243/
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 27, 2009 22:12 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
Not at all. You're looking at this in the wrong direction. If your null hypothesis is "U238 is an absolutely stable isotope" then you only need to see a single particle decay to disprove it. If your null hypothesis is "The relatively low proportion of women in open source communities is entirely because they are less interested in the first place" (ie, there's no active process in the community itself that excludes women) then verifiable anecdotal evidence is entirely sufficient to disprove the null hypothesis.
I'm not denying that your figures show that there are few women involved in free software or amateur radio. I'm just saying that it's impossible to deduce *why* there are few women involved from that information.
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 28, 2009 14:25 UTC (Fri) by Skud (guest, #59840) [Link]
It occurs to me that there's another way we could look at this.
Are interest and involvement different things? It seems to me that for an activity that has no direct monetary cost, is conducted online and internationally, and about which information is readily available, they are essentially the same thing.
Compare with eg. sailing. I'm interested in sailing but not involved, because the monetary costs are high and I can't do it in odd bits of free time from home or work, but have to go far out of my way to do it; also, many kinds of sailing I'm interested in require certifications/licenses/training that take extensive time and money to acquire, and for which I can't self-educate.
So if you have an activity where interest and involvement are very close to being the same thing, the question "why aren't people involved" is almost exactly *the same question* as "why aren't people interested".
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 28, 2009 15:03 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
I thought that the claim being made was that many females are interested, but are not involved due to sexism.
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 28, 2009 21:38 UTC (Fri) by kov (subscriber, #7423) [Link]
Yeah, I mostly agree that in Free Software those are almost synonyms. But as dlang points out,
the main idea behind many of the women-encouraging projects I have observed and worked with in recent times assumes that there are women who are interested, but do not involve themselves because of some kind of barrier: usually, we believe, the bad atmosphere created by bad behavior against women.
So bear with me here: maybe it's time to rethink this whole thing. Maybe all women who are
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 29, 2009 11:44 UTC (Sat) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]
> Maybe all women who are interested are already involved, despite having to deal with crappy behavior from time to time, and we need to work to shift our attention to what makes women not be interested in the first place, which I think is what Bruce is saying.
I'm not sure what you meant to say.
But what you said is "maybe we shouldn't do anything about existing crappy behavior -- or even bother noticing it -- since a few women seem to put up with it". (Not to mention ignoring all the women who say that no, they really would be interested if it weren't for the crappy behavior.)
Perhaps we can put attention *both* on fixing the crappy behavior *and* working on the problems women face before they reach FOSS?
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 29, 2009 17:33 UTC (Sat) by hypatiadotca (guest, #60478) [Link]
This also bring up the "Society sucks, we can't possibly do anything!" anti-pattern that Terri wrote about here: http://geekfeminism.org/2009/08/27/society-sucks-but-we-d...
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 30, 2009 1:35 UTC (Sun) by kov (subscriber, #7423) [Link]
I surely don't agree with that anti-pattern, now, what do you think of what Skud said, about
interest and involvement being the same? All of you who are here are good examples of women who were not stopped by stupid stuff, and got involved, and are doing your thing. I really cherish that fact, good to see you gals! Do you think there are actually women who are interested (as in, working with the code, and who would really like to contribute), but not involved in the projects because they tried and hit a barrier?
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 30, 2009 2:27 UTC (Sun) by hypatiadotca (guest, #60478) [Link]
> what do you think of what Skud said, about interest and involvement being the same?
I think that "lack of interest" is not a good metric, as I think there are a lot of social pressures at play outside of Free Software which cloud "interest" to the point where it's meaningless. Similarly with male "interest" in traditionally female-dominated professions like nursing - have you ever considered whether you were interested in nursing? It doesn't even cross most guys' minds.
That said, of the few women who are already explicitly interested, not all are already involved. I know for a fact that there are women who are already doing CS / IT / programming work in various capacities who look at what kind of crap takes place in free software and say "thanks but no thanks".
> Do you think there are actually women who are interested (as in, working with the code, and who would really like to contribute), but not involved in the projects because they tried and hit a barrier?
I think there are both men and women who have been interested but have hit barriers and not gotten involved. I personally know examples of both. I think there are additional barriers to women's participation relating to the various things that have been discussed over this thread - being hit on, being talked down to, being harassed, etc, which men don't deal with to the same degree or at all, in some cases.
I hope that answers your questions. I'm watching the RSS feed of the comments, let me know if it brings up new ones :)
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 30, 2009 3:31 UTC (Sun) by kov (subscriber, #7423) [Link]
> Similarly with male "interest" in traditionally female-dominated professions like nursing -
have you ever considered whether you were interested in nursing? It doesn't even cross most guys' minds.
I have in fact. I have absolutely no interest for that, though I was quite interested in biology
> I think there are both men and women who have been interested but have hit barriers and
OK, thanks for the input =). I have seen some of that myself, and like I said, I think it's
> I hope that answers your questions. I'm watching the RSS feed of the comments, let me
Coolie, I am watching replies, so same here.
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 30, 2009 4:41 UTC (Sun) by hypatiadotca (guest, #60478) [Link]
> Being female-dominated areas was not what pushed me out, mind you, I
> just don't really like dealing with people day to day that much =).
That's a perfectly valid reason, and I'm glad that you did at least consider it. I think if you ask around your male friends you'll be surprised at how many never even got that far. It's the same with women and the "hard" sciences - in both cases, "interest" just never comes into play because it's not on the list of professions folks consider.
> My original point was that we should try to not blind ourselves by
I hear what you're saying there, but I also think it's super important to be able to make the link between the issues that we face in our day-to-day lives and the society we live in, or as second-wave feminists put it, that "the personal is political". As a specific example, the most interesting way that this works that I've seen lately is the way gender affects negotiation, and how this has a broad impact on the lives of both women and men. It ranges from the big-ticket issues like women's ability to negotiate pay, to the every day interpersonal interactions - how many times have you heard a woman ask "Would you like to do $foo?" when she really means "I would like to do $foo, is that amenable to you?". There's a whole book on the topic called Women Don't Ask, and let me tell you, it was a life-changing read for me. I've got 4 copies on my desk because I've been giving it to all the women (and some of the men) I know. http://womendontask.com is the interweb site for it.
The flipside is that our experiences of oppression or difference do not map perfectly, and we may not always be able to judge them accurately; there's a phenomenon called "denial of personal disadvantage" which basically means that even if we see that discrimination exists, we may not believe that it happens to us. Here's an interesting study on the topic: http://www.ur.umich.edu/9394/Feb07_94/15.htm
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 30, 2009 1:35 UTC (Sun) by kov (subscriber, #7423) [Link]
I didn't say that, and I think it would be good to avoid extrapolating additional stuff from what
people say.
Although I don't think we should expect to live in an ideal world, I do believe we need to keep
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 31, 2009 12:50 UTC (Mon) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]
If I misread it, then I apologize -- as I said, I don't know what you intended. But you said, quote, "we need to rethink" the idea that women are driven away by the bad behavior, and we need to, quote, "shift our attention to what not makes women be interested in the first place". Rethinking something is what you do when your understanding of something is wrong. Shifting attention means that attention goes away from one thing (the "barrier" of "bad behavior", in this case), and towards another.
Those are the words that my response was based on; I don't see where I'm extrapolating. Is there some other way to read your words? Can you explain?
> People will still sometimes strongly disagree, and some discussions will keep being heated and not that civil. I think this is normal in any community of people. Working towards making sexist behavior go away keeps being a very important goal, nevertheless.
I definitely agree. I hope it's clear that I'm not trying to attack you personally with my remarks above, but just continue educating people on how to understand and deal with these issues. (Not that I know everything about it either, but apparently I know more than some, and that's enough to be useful...)
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 31, 2009 13:24 UTC (Mon) by kov (subscriber, #7423) [Link]
> If I misread it, then I apologize -- as I said, I don't know what you
intended. But you said, quote, "we need to rethink" the idea that women are driven away by the bad behavior, and we need to, quote, "shift our attention to what not makes women be interested in the first place". Rethinking something is what you do when your understanding of something is wrong. Shifting attention means that attention goes away from one thing (the "barrier" of "bad behavior", in this case), and towards another.
I believe we need to rethink our belief that there is a large number of
When I say shift the atention, I actually mean shifting our focus. It
I believe seeing the world as black and white is one of the problems we
In some cases, we are so passionate, and so frigging tired of meeting
Why am I saying this? Because I think lots of interesting ideas have been
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Aug 31, 2009 22:15 UTC (Mon) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]
> I believe seeing the world as black and white is one of the problems we usually have in these discussions, and I can see how my words could be misinterpreted if you use a binary view of the world.
That's... very generous of you?
If you re-read my original post in this thread, you'll notice that my point was that we *don't* have to choose. I'm not making things up because I have a binary view of the world; I'm pointing out that the plain meaning of the original term "shift our attention" -- and also your clarifying term, "shifting our focus" -- is to *reduce* the attentional focus we give to one matter so as to give it to another. Not drop to nothing, necessarily, but de-emphasize. You think that maybe there aren't actually all that many women who "got held back by these issues", and maybe we shouldn't worry about them as much as we are.
I disagree with that. I think that we as a community don't put nearly enough effort into dealing with "these issues". I also think we should put more effort into dealing with other issues, sure, but that that's no reason to reduce our (already paltry) efforts in this area.
> when someone questions anything, that one is surely one of the dumb guys who are our enemies.
I definitely see where you're coming from here. But I think you misunderstand our position. Dumb guys aren't enemies, they just need to... learn some stuff so they aren't dumb anymore :-). Everyone's a newb at some point, no shame in that.
> Because I think lots of interesting ideas have been raised here [...] but these ideas have been mostly shot down on the spot because they _looked_ like ideas you would hear from an enemy.
I don't know which specific comments you're looking at, so I can't respond to them. But I can say that in general, when I personally have critiqued people's responses, my goal hasn't been to shoot them down and make them go away. My goal is to draw out problematic assumptions and show just how unconscious and common they are, in the hopes that people will learn something, dust themselves off, and do better next time.
And I know that sometimes having someone do that to you is painful and sucks -- I've been on the other side of such comments, and probably will be again! -- but I don't see any alternative.
> I mean, when one says 'maybe the main problem is not this one', this is very different from saying 'there is no problem at all'
And the other problem is that on the internet, it's hard to tell who has good intentions. You're right that those are different statements. But people who argue in bad faith will often bring up some other issue as an attempt to change the subject and stop discussion of the original issue. And even people arguing in good faith will do this accidentally. In either case, the end result is that the conversation wanders around and doesn't accomplish anything. Since this is so common, and since these conversations are so exhausting in the first place, those of us with more of an investment in accomplishing something will therefore tend to jump on such topic shifts very quickly.
Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? Posted Sep 1, 2009 23:39 UTC (Tue) by kov (subscriber, #7423) [Link] > If you re-read my original post in this thread, you'll notice that my point was that we *don't* have to choose. Exactly! We don't have to choose to forget an issue for the other, but there's no way we can make everything the focus, otherwise we have no focus at all. We are tired of knowing that if everything is a priority, there's no priority (specially if you have to deal with customers who have no idea of what planning actually is =P). Our current focus is on looking to the inside; I don't think we should shoot down questioning whether this is helping we further our common goals as well as we could. Doing that by no means denies problems; questioning status quo is essential to improve. > In either case, the end result is that the conversation wanders around and doesn't accomplish anything. Since this is so common, and since these conversations are so exhausting in the first place, those of us with more of an investment in accomplishing something will therefore tend to jump on such topic shifts very quickly. This is exactly my point. Just look at the threads. People spend so much time saying "that's not what I said", that many times questions or points that would otherwise have produced useful ideas are forgotten.
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