25 Women in 10 Free Software Organizations for GNOME's Outreach Program for Women

In the Real World, that is, outside of philosophical arguments, the reason for doing what GNOME has done is two-fold:
- there are extra barriers for women to get involved in Free Software (and having more women involved in itself lowers this barrier);
- having a larger % of women in a Free Software project increases fun and productivity

Both of these aren't exclusive to Free Software and quite well documented so if you disagree, I suggest you look up some research instead of asking me. I'm surely going to be too lazy to do your work for you.

To return to the subject regarding a governmental authority enforcing the rule that life isn't always fair, there was a terrorist attack that occurred on September 11 2011 against the United States of America. The United States had the option of declaring to the friends and family of the victims of the attacks that life isn't always fair and it isn't the job of the government to act to attempt to make it so. Instead governmental authorities decided to strike out against terrorists and illegal combatants. I am not aware of terrorists or illegal combatants having any seats at the UN so this raises some interesting questions. Was it fair for the US government to begin combat maneuvers against groups that were clearly disadvantaged regarding worldwide political status? Should the US have waited for illegal combatants and/or terrorists to be given seats at the UN before attempting any military actions against them?

My point being that I can mention interesting facts and ask questions that can detract from the issue at hand as well. I firmly believe that Valerie has does an excellent job with regards to explaining the problem, giving examples of it and showing how we can all do something to help. She even gives helpful replies in this thread. If you were genuinely seeking clarification or were in fact ignorant of the issues then I apologize. I have myself been ignorant of issues or topics in the past and have attempted to appear more knowledgeable then I was without even attempting to glean basic knowledge in subjects before discussing them. I hope to merely seem ignorant of significant subject matter in the future as opposed to appearing arrogant and trying to be a smartapple.

In any case, I wondered if you were trolling, this seems to indicate you are. Please try to argue with arguments, not with emotions.

Even in this reply, you're exaggerating and being emotional.

You seem to take this outreach program really personal as if it personally affects you. Is that true, and could you explain why?

e.g. "maybe it just is"... right!

Hypocrisy is someone claiming they're against sexism, while opposing programs that try to do something about it.

Even if we could, with a wave of the magic wand, immediately make the community entirely non-sexist and as welcoming to women as men: this still wouldn't solve the problem. Inequality created the problem, but equality alone can't fix it effectively.

LWN is an excellent community resource. If a woman wants to get involved in our community she should be reading it. For me, a discussion about whether an Outreach programme is sexist against men - no matter the conduct of the discussion - is not going to be understood by such readers as a jolly exercise in freedom of speech, or the mature discussion of a community that thinks it might have solved it sexism problems.

She may take one look and wonder how insecure we must be as a male community if we cannot tolerate a programme to encourage minority participants. That's probably about the most positive view I can think she would go away with; the other possible interpretations are far worse.

I don't restrict this belief to posters who are against pro-women programmes. I genuinely believe that comments whose content is largely destructive ("I want you to stop doing X because I don't like it", whether X is "developing systemd", "GNOME UI improvements", "development under a BSD license", whatever) shouldn't have a place here.

However, you quickly want someone else to be banned though. Asking for that is not offensive however.

Within GNOME we've had a Code of Conduct for a long time now. I'm not sure if you ever participated in any of such discussions on how to behave and how to judge.

I guess your intention is that 1 person calling for a ban is not how to do things, to which everyone will agree. However, people are NOT free to say everything they want in any manner that they want. I find it really sad that LWN allows for such bad behaviour to continue endlessly.

To make it into a car analogy. If someone pulls the car to the right loads of times, you can hope for the car to head in the same direction as it went before. This outreach program is a small pull to the left.

Yes, society influences that might not have exposed women to the information about GSoC or led them to dismiss it because it meant being part of the environment unfriendly to women and women's uncertainty about whether they are "rockstar coders" enough to apply disqualified women from being applicants.

"One wonder though why did you concentrate on that particular irrelevant criteria... did you try to evaluate the representation in GSOC with regard to citizenship, creed, height, weight, hair-density, number of toes ? or any other criteria irrelevant to the task at hand ? why not ? what makes gender so special ?"

Effectively, for decades Free Software and by association Google Summer of Code had a "For Men" label. 98% of people who took advantage of the opportunity to contribute to it and of the tens of thousands paid opportunities to work on it were men. This is why gender is a relevant criteria. It allows us to grow this group of contributors who otherwise would not feel confident to get involved. It doesn't mean that we can't do outreach based on other criteria if we find that they put people at disadvantage when considering joining Free Software. We want Free Software to be welcoming to all newcomers, and having outreach programs like this one improve things for everyone.

"I don't have the hard data to back this up, but anecdotal evidence and personal experience suggest that many if not most active hackers don' have much of a 'social circle', especially outside the floss community.
When I started programming, there was not a single person in my 'social circle' that owned a computer even less knew anything about code."

But the society around you didn't discourage you from spending time at your computer and the toys you played with since your childhood likely encouraged breaking and building things. For women it is more important to know someone personally who they can work with while getting involved in the project.

"I'll agree to that (well except for the joke thing). Although rudeness is unfriendly to anyone not just women.. but that is another topic :-)"

See http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents - a lot of these were jokes that anticipated a men-only audience!

In my early days of contributing, when I was the only woman in an IRC channel, I definitely saw innocent jokes made that anticipated men-only audience. "Being one of the guys" or leaving were the only options women saw then. Thankfully, with outreach efforts like this one, men in the community are aware that women are part of the conversation.

Rudeness affects everyone, but it especially affects women.

"Ok, but then how exactly 'institutionalized job discrimination' acheive that goal ? is it required, in order to advertize 'friendliness and maturity' to one group to exhibit overt discrimination against another group ?"

Creating opportunities for an underrepresented and disadvantaged group is not discrimination or sexism. It is required to create these opportunities and invite people who otherwise might stay out. We have a lot of catching up to do.

"Well, that _is_ the problem. These are not necessarily the 'strongest' applicants... the are the 'strongest' among the one you did not exclude from participating. They may very well be the strongest overall, but it is not possible to tell unless they compete in an open field."

There are lots and lots of other opportunities for everyone. This is a special targeted effort that is needed to attract a specific group precisely because the members of that group are at disadvantage when considering all the opportunities already available.

""Many applicants think this program was just the right thing that they needed to get more involved. It meets their existing interest and experience in Free Software, and helps them become more integrated in a project community."

I'm pretty sure that statement is equally true for a program open to _everybody_ like GSOC."

Yes! Yet, the OPW applicants didn't apply for GSoC.

""6 women at a conference of 160 means that you are often the only woman in the room and that makes you question why you are the only one there."

because only 6 woman bothered to show-up... it is not like there are armed-guard at the entrance that prevent woman from entering.
In any case, how is that the fault of that kid somewhere that got denied an opportunity because of his lack of boobs ? why should _he_ be punished ?"

I explained earlier why women were held back from showing up. Men were and are presented with lots of opportunities.

""Basically, this program works for everyone involved and only grows the pie."

Well not for everyone... for the qualified candidate that got excluded because of his gender, that surely does not 'works'."

It worked, they applied for GSoC or a job or contributed in their spare time and were a part of a bigger and better community that builds cooler stuff with its better-rounded perspective.

My *personal* opinion is that I'd rather lose a hundred misogynists if by doing so I make this forum a better place for *one* woman, but that's just my opinion and not what I said in my comment. What I have advocated is a strong condemnation of the kind of blatant sexism that could decide programmes for the inclusion of women in free software are evil and pernicious. Seems like they least we can do.

Search news for brogrammier culture, difficulties of communication for women in electronic forums, inappropriate behavior towards women in software conferences, and other similar topics. Even LWN has some interesting articles to that respect.

You've never consciously discriminated against any woman. The massively overwhelming probability is that you've done so unconsciously. That's not something you should be punished for, but it is something that won't be fixed unless compensating biases are put in place.

> I am male. I never in my life discriminated against any woman let alone for thousands of years. I did do nothing wrong.

> Yet I'm being discriminated against at numerous occasions...

This is a serious problem with reparation schemes or any situation in which a minority group is given preference -at the expense of- other groups. But that's not what GNOME thing is. If it wasn't a targeted program for women in open source, it's not like there'd be some equivalent non-targeted thing. The point is not just to find developers, but to improve network effects, change the atmosphere and tone of the open-source, and otherwise make the open-source world a more appealing place for women.

And the endgame of -that- is to increase the net developer power, not change its composition. There is no excess of open source developers. Nobody will be displaced by un-alienating alienated groups.

But of course you've taken advantage of your privileged position, I'm certain I have, probably without even being aware of it, and have had discrimination fall in your favor, which is much more common than for a male to be discriminated against. As a member of a privileged class you get to live life on easy mode compared to someone else with the same basic qualities but who looks different. There really aren't many moustache-twirling villans out there who actively try and put people down, and no one thinks that of you, the reality is much more insidious.

The whole argument crumbles right here. If a man wants to be a Free Software programmer, he does not need the kind of help a woman needs (for instance, to understand brogrammer culture and to know what to do about it; to communicate effectively with a male majority in mailing lists and other electronic forums; to steer from social pressures that would make them go away from exact sciences).

So, when you do a program like that, you are not doing so at the expense of men; the field will be as full of us as it always has been. But if you prevent a program like that to happen, you will do so at the expense of women; the result is that the field will have the same amount of men, but less women. Got it?

But by definition, this is what a targeted outreach program does.

> 2/ 99% of the population does not participate in open source, regardless of gender.... so why ignoring 99% of the population and instead concentrating on the marginal difference of participation based on some arbitrary criteria is a good thing for open source ? (again within the context of 1/; targeting an audience is one thing, actively discriminating is another)

Just by talking about open-source software, we are excluding people who lack technical skills, people who lack time, people who lack access to computers or networks, and people who aren't interested in software. These exclusions don't sound to me like they should exclude any particular groups of people, but it seems like they do --- and in the context of such a limited population, the size differences between sub-populations is much more than "marginal".

But, I don't have numbers to back this up, so I'll leave it at that.

With comments like this you're doing your best to feel women unwelcome here and in the wider open source community.

Please stop.

Without programs like this, yes, women in the open source community *are* set apart and treated differently. With programs like this, women are brought in as equals and treated appropriately. You're not helping your case, dude.

Obviously what it does is focus in that women are under represented in Free Software. As a result the women might get treated differently. Such behaviour is not tolerated though in GNOME.

Perhaps certain commentors fit that description, but not necessarily everyone who disagrees with an affirmative-action approach.

I remember being offended at an affirmative action program at Cal Tech when I was applying to colleges, but eventually I became less certain as to whether affirmative action is always harmful or not.

The problem is that social forces are like impulse functions with a long tail -- previous generations have a significant effect on shaping current individuals. You can suddenly change the legal rules at a particular point in time, but the differences in initial state at T=0 for legal equality can result in a social system that does not reach its natural equilibrium for a looong time.

The in-my-opinion still-open question is whether affirmative action can actually help a society reach its natural equilibrium where individuals are no longer affected by discrimination against their ancestors. It certainly has potential bad side effects, such as resentment and decreased expectations of competence for the people who participated in the programs, but maybe judicious use can be better than the alternative of waiting for culture to reset itself over time?

At this point in time, in "western" culture, the biggest forces holding certain people back from getting involved in tech seem to be internalized forces (related to development of self-image) rather than externalized forces (explicit acts of discrimination by others). Does affirmative action help in that area? Programs that use mentoring by others of the same group probably do help, while those that just institute quotas probably do not (those who accept the positions are probably self-confident individuals who would have succeeded anyways).