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Ada Initiative kicks off census
Ada Initiative kicks off census to research women's status in open technology and culture Wednesday, March 9th, 2011 The Ada Initiative launched a census today to gain a broad understanding of women's participation, representation, and status in open technology and culture. "We want to know what women are working on and how each community's culture affects women," said Ada Initiative co-founder Valerie Aurora. "We also want to know where to direct our work in helping women in the community." The census includes questions about the representation and status of women in open technology and culture, and will be repeated periodically to measure changes in the community and help shape the Ada Initiative's programs. Anyone involved in the following fields, regardless of gender, is encouraged to take the 5-minute survey (http://adainitiative.org/projects/census): Open source/free software Open source hardware Open geodata and maps Open government Open data Open standards and formats Open educational initiatives Open/decentralised social networking Creative Commons and free culture Wikipedia and other wikis Open crisis response and humanitarian projects Barcamps and unconferences Online/digital activism Remix/mashup culture Transformative works fandom, including fan fiction, fan art, and fan vidding Maker/DIY community Hacker spaces Coworking The Ada Initiative Census can be found at: http://adainitiative.org/projects/census The census closes on March 29th, 2011. About the Ada Initiative The Ada Initiative is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing participation of women in open technology and culture, founded by long-time women in open technology activists and programmers Valerie Aurora and Mary Gardiner. The Ada Initiative is named for Countess Ada Lovelace, widely recognized as the world's first computer programmer. The Ada Initiative partners with organizations and communities to increase the participation of women in ways that shape the technology, such as software design and development, writing for Wikipedia, and community leadership. Contact details: Email: press@adainitiative.org Phone: +1 (415) 779-5914 Website: http://adainitiative.org (Log in to post comments)
Ada Initiative kicks off census Posted Mar 9, 2011 23:16 UTC (Wed) by csamuel (✭ supporter ✭, #2624) [Link]
The summary article on the LWN site should mention that the survey itself is for anyone to answer, irrespective of gender.
Ada Initiative kicks off census Posted Mar 10, 2011 6:53 UTC (Thu) by mordae (subscriber, #54701) [Link]
Hmm, I'm not a native speaker.
> Women are well represented in my primary open technology and culture community.
Does it mean "there is a lot of them", "the quality of how they present themselves is high", or "there are woman [rights] representatives who are doing their job well"?
Ada Initiative kicks off census Posted Mar 10, 2011 6:57 UTC (Thu) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link]
I was also uncertain about this. In my primary group, there's around 20% women, whereas in the leadership of that group, women approaches half, and those are competent and respected.
Thus, I'd say that women are well represented, if it's about the quality and positions of those who are female and represent the group, whereas I'd say 20% is pretty bad if the question is meant to sample participation.
Ada Initiative kicks off census Posted Mar 10, 2011 12:28 UTC (Thu) by vaurora (guest, #38407) [Link]
The interpretation of the questions is up to you - we're just trying to get a high level feeling for the current state of women in various open communities. If you like, you can add a note about how you interpreted the questions at the end of the survey.
Thanks for taking the survey!
Ada Initiative kicks off census Posted Mar 10, 2011 13:32 UTC (Thu) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link]
"The interpretation of the questions is up to you". Huh? A survey where the questions are open to interpretation will result in meaningless results.
Ada Initiative kicks off census Posted Mar 10, 2011 14:19 UTC (Thu) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]
Not if the aim is to measure attitudes of respondents, rather than actual numbers. If what you want to find out is the fraction of people that think that women are 'well represented' then simply asking them will give you exactly that.
Ada Initiative kicks off census Posted Mar 11, 2011 13:34 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
If you don't know whether the result reflects people seeing high numerical presence, or people seeing a tiny presence but they're doing a great job, how can the result be useful?
Ada Initiative kicks off census Posted Mar 11, 2011 18:00 UTC (Fri) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]
You can compare subsets within the survey; e.g: x% of women involved in free software think that women are 'well represented', but over y% of men do. If you look at the question in reverse as "Do you think there's a problem?" then that sort of thing is potentially interesting.
It's far from a complete picture of the facts, but there's a limit to how useful any self-selecting web poll is ever going to be. Generating a few broad brush strokes (or indeed, a few easy headlines) is about all you can hope for.
Ada Initiative kicks off census Posted Mar 12, 2011 15:29 UTC (Sat) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
"Do you think there's a problem?" - that would have been a much better question. Answer to that question would have meaning, and could be analysed in subsets.
The "well represented" question isn't the reverse. Women could be a small minority (i.e. there's a problem), but they're representing the cause really well (thus response: yes), or could be roughly 50% (thus probably no problem), thus response: also yes (regardless of how competently the cause of gender equality is being represented by its advocates).
I can't see any way to tell what the respondent meant by their "yes" or "no". Responses to that question might have to be discarded.
In any case, it's just one question. Best of luck to the census organisers.
Ada Initiative kicks off census Posted Mar 12, 2011 17:17 UTC (Sat) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"Women could be a small minority (i.e. there's a problem)"
That is the core fallacy of this argument, which boils down the the following 'postulate':
The relative composition of the membership of the practitioners of any human activity must match the relative composition of the human population at large... or we have 'a problem'.
You want to prove that there is a problem ? here is a methodology:
Enlist the participation of a handful good open-source dev (regardless of gender or, for that matter, any other irrelevant trait)
set-up two new avatars for each, one advertising being a woman the other being a man. then RANDOMLY attribute a bunch of patch by a developer to his 2 avatars, and record the acceptance rate of the patches.
If you record a statistically significant variation in the acceptance rate of the patches based on the advertised gender of the avatar then you will have demonstrated a problem; That is : Patches that get rejected on irrelevant ground.
Ada Initiative kicks off census Posted Mar 12, 2011 20:14 UTC (Sat) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
There's a number of flawed assumptions in your logic.
First, you've assumed that pure meritocracy is the ideal for achieving our goals. If the goal is to write good free software for all the tasks people need to do, and if meritocracy cuts the potential developer pool in half, it's a fail.
Second, you've assumed that the person accepting patches is perfect and isn't influenced by communication style. (Most men communicate differently to most women, that's been proven and I don't think it's in doubt.) You didn't assume this for your proposed test, but since that test will never take place, I'm referring to whether patches are really only judged on merit.
And third, you've focussed on acceptance of patches, but this is only the last step. For a developer to do their job well, they have to be accepted into the group and have productive communications with the other developers.
Your proposed test is also impractical. Only a real world test would suffice, and it's really unlikely anyone'll convince a major project to try this out for long enough.
If the developer pool of the free software movement can be doubled, or even increased by 10%, by examining what changes will increase female participation (or reduce exclusion), then this is very important.
Ada Initiative kicks off census Posted Mar 13, 2011 19:40 UTC (Sun) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"First, you've assumed that pure meritocracy is the ideal for achieving our goals."
Well, I don't know about '_our_' goals... but yeah, I do postulate that pure meritocracy is ideal, which is a goal of mine in and of itself.
"and if meritocracy cuts the potential developer pool in half, it's a fail."
Heuh ?? 'meritocracy' is a kind of 'ranking' system there is no built in cut-off point. Note that meritocracy reward 'merit', which is not necessarily 'talent'.
"Most men communicate differently to most women, that's been proven and I don't think it's in doubt."
"You didn't assume this for your proposed test"
"Only a real world test would suffice, and it's really unlikely anyone'll convince a major project to try this out for long enough."
There is no need, and actually it would negate the test, that the recipients of the patches be aware that the test is on-going.
"If the developer pool of the free software movement can be doubled, or even increased by 10%"
"but since that test will never take place"
Ada Initiative kicks off census Posted Mar 29, 2011 13:31 UTC (Tue) by alex2 (guest, #73934) [Link]
Yes, that's something I also observed, in the usual discrimination-against-women-discussion are experiments mostly lacking. It's easier to put up an ambiguous web-poll from which you can draw any conclusions you want then actually openly discuss an experiment setting and pull that one off. Looks like the risk is too high that the result might not be what you want them to be.
All the effort of geekfeminism.org and Ada Initiative seems to me to be more counterproductive than anything else, especially not geared bring in more women in general but women of a similar mindset.
Dear LWN editors, please stay on the purely technical topics and refrain from making implicit advertisement for them, especially as you discourage a discussion on the topic here.
Ada Initiative kicks off census Posted Mar 11, 2011 20:52 UTC (Fri) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"If you don't know whether the result reflects people seeing high numerical presence, or people seeing a tiny presence but they're doing a great job, how can the result be useful?"
because when you know in advance the conclusion you want to draw, you certainly want the process to be as vague as possible to make sure that no facts will get in the way....
What problem? Posted Mar 14, 2011 6:56 UTC (Mon) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link]
shmget said:
> "Women could be a small minority (i.e. there's a problem)"
> That is the core fallacy of this argument, which boils down the the following 'postulate':
> The relative composition of the membership of the practitioners of any human activity must match the relative composition of the human population at large... or we have 'a problem'.
I agree with him completely. Women are free to choose their activities in most of the world. If they choose to be FOSS programmers, fine; if not, fine.
By the same token, people are free to choose to support and associate with projects that do or do not discriminate against people for whatever reasons. Such projects are free to succeed or fail based on their merits.
Trying to artificially increase the proportion of females in FOSS projects is almost as bad as trying to artificially decrease the proportion of males in FOSS projects--oh, wait, that is exactly what they are trying to do.
It's reverse discrimination. Which is as bad as discrimination. Which makes them hypocrites.
Our goal as people, and as FOSS supporters, should be to increase freedom. Freedom includes being free to choose one's activities.
Efforts to bring more people into FOSS projects and communities should try to attract PEOPLE, not women or men specifically. An outcry would result if a group tried to reach out to male developers, yet that would simply be the other side of this same coin: discrimination.
The only possible problem would be one of women being mistreated by some people in some projects (n.b. I try carefully to avoid generalizing). If such a problem does exist in some projects, that is a matter of the heart, which cannot be solved by artificially inflating the female:male ratio--in fact, such efforts would only "fan the flames" in such projects. It's also no different than women (or any other group of people) being treated badly in any other context in the world.
Anyone that wants to help people should be willing to help all people, not only people of a certain gender, etc. Feminism has done much harm to our society. Equal rights are already provided for by law (in the U.S. and most countries, anyway). After that, it's simply a matter of freedom of choice and the freedom to (mis)treat other people according to one's heart.
And there's only one real solution to matters of the heart.
What problem? Posted Mar 14, 2011 13:01 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Feminism has done much harm to our society.Regardless of what else you say, that sentence in its own right is a sign of staggering ignorance or towering misogyny. Do you have any idea what the lot of women was like before the arrival of feminism?
Nice Guys? Posted Mar 16, 2011 15:02 UTC (Wed) by gmatht (guest, #58961) [Link]
I presume blujay is using the term "Feminist" in a manner similar to how Feminists typically use the term "Nice Guy".
Feminism has indeed done harm. Posted Mar 16, 2011 23:15 UTC (Wed) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link]
I'm neither ignorant nor misogynistic. I would say that it's a sign of your own ignorance that you would label me as such for my making a simple statement.
Feminism has indeed done much harm to our society. Gender roles have become confused and the differences between sexes have become blurred. This has undermined the atomic family, put more mothers in full-time jobs, and left children to be raised by day-care workers or by themselves. It's given stay-at-home-mothers and homemakers a stigma. These poorly-raised children are growing up to be more selfish, more maladjusted, and this has caused a great increase in the divorce rate.
The root problem is one of selfishness, an "it's all about me!" mentality. It's not been about equal rights--it's been about some women seizing power, and about oppressing all men, who are presumed to have been oppressing all women.
Men today are confused and emasculated. Their roles and duties and responsibilities have been usurped by women, leaving men without strong identities. Many of these men drift aimlessly, postponing maturation for years, living at home without career-oriented jobs, without commitment to families of their own. Many young men turn to gangs and crime because they've been raised without strong male role models (fathers). Men don't know how to be men anymore.
Young girls are growing up without strong father figures, and are turning to sex to fulfill their real need for love and affection from their fathers. This is leading to more single-parent families, children born out of wedlock, and more abortion--all of these simply perpetuate the cycle.
Fewer young women are getting married, and many more who do are getting divorced, because the kind of men that women want to marry are becoming harder to find, because now men are being oppressed and not taught how to be men. So not only has feminism hurt men, but it's hurt women as well.
The fact is, men and women are different, and they're supposed to be. Having equal rights under the law doesn't mean that they should be thought of as the same in roles and needs, strengths and weaknesses.
If my opinion piques your interest, you can google for "feminism harm" or other similar terms and find more information. You don't have to take my word for it--although most of it seems to be common sense to me.
Of course, I hate to generalize, so please note carefully that I did not say that all feminists have done nothing but harm to our society. Surely some good things have come from some parts of the feminist movements. But it's also true that it's done much harm--and I suspect that it's done more harm than good.
Feminism has indeed done harm. Posted Mar 16, 2011 23:19 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] OK, please, that is more than enough of that. LWN is not the place for this kind of discussion. I will not delete this post because we really don't do that here, but I'll serve notice that more of the same will not be welcome.
Feminism has indeed done harm. Posted Mar 23, 2011 14:03 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
On those grounds, surely this entire article is nothing but flamebait?
What problem? Posted Mar 14, 2011 14:19 UTC (Mon) by spaetz (subscriber, #32870) [Link]
> Feminism has done much harm to our society.
This is a bit like saying, safety belts are responsible for many deaths. :-)
> Equal rights are already provided for by law
And that makes you imply that men and women are actually treated equally in everyday life? :)
And no they are not, try to take "maternity leave" as a *man* in a country such as, say, Switzerland.
What problem? Posted Mar 14, 2011 15:37 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Try to take paternity leave as a mother. There's a reason some countries are simply relabelling this 'parental leave'.
What problem? Posted Mar 14, 2011 23:38 UTC (Mon) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]
> And no they are not, try to take "maternity leave" as a *man* in a country such as, say, Switzerland.
Reminds me of a Monty Python moment:
Reg: I'm not opressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb. Where is the foetus going to gestate? You're going to keep it in a box?
But - less humourless - to reply to the grandparent:
> Our goal as people, and as FOSS supporters, should be to increase freedom. Freedom includes being free to choose one's activities.
Absolutely. Sometimes increasing freedom requires affirmative action to remove irrelevant barriers - or at least to make such barriers visible so that they can be avoided or worked around. My understanding of the Ada Initiative is that its aim is to find those barriers which disproportionately affect women, so it can then understand them, illuminate them, and find ways to remove, avoid, or work around them. The point of the survey (hardly a census!) seems to be to discover areas where it is likely to be easy to find barriers. Whether it will achieve that or not is another question - but not my problem :-)
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