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

> Citation? With what authority do you assert this?

Based on studies such as this
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/02/04/science/gir...

which fit with my personal observations over many years of experience going to engineering school and working in a tech field with various friends who were minorities in engineering (and other technical fields), plus interactions with other people who stayed far away from tech because they were conditioned to be intimidated and/or uninterested by it.

I don't claim explicit acts of discrimination are non-existent, and clearly you have experienced them, but there sure are a *lot* of girls and minority youth who have been socialized to stay in their comfort zones of fashion/sports/whatever rather than trying out fun technical activities such as programming, model rockets, etc. All their friends are doing that other stuff, and the thought to try any programming (let alone free software specifically) is never even considered.

Haven't you observed this as well, in your work with schools?

> I would propose the exact opposite: you could say a woman who stays in open source has a poor self-image for staying when women with a better self-image would stay away because of the toxic behavior they witness, no?

Do women with good self-image stay offline altogether, due to the trolls who can pop up nearly anywhere? Not that I've seen, unless they personally become a big target for some reason. On the other hand people with confidence issues don't even consider that they *could* contribute to a software project, so whether they would "stay" is a moot point.

> Certainly the come-ons and the insults I've gotten are external!

By "biggest force" I meant "most common", certainly explicit discrimination is a big turn-off for anybody who actually experiences it. Did not mean to imply it was non-existent or unimportant when it happens.

> Anyway, this is why we need programs like the Outreach Program for Women so we at least have a base population of women (I've heard the 20% number given as being the essential base population needed) such that there's enough women in the community to influence the culture that the come-ons, insults, and worse stop being accepted and the men's rights crazies stop getting taken seriously.

Are you sure most women who join free software projects really get treated like that, or could you be among a minority of unlucky ones? I'm sure you personally know others who have been harassed, but consider possible selection bias (those who don't get harassed won't need to seek advice from well-known feminist geeks who have also been through it)

Regardless of whether those cultural issues are widely prevalent or not, we're agreed that having enough mentors to go around can be significant.