The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

By Jake Edge
February 16, 2011

The gender imbalance in the free software world is largely mirrored in the related "open technology and culture" communities. Various efforts have been tried over the years to try to rebalance things, with varying degrees of success. The newly formed Ada Initiative is taking a different tack than those previous efforts: raising money to support full-time staff, along with various projects, rather than going the traditional all-volunteer route.

Valerie Aurora and Mary Gardiner, who are longtime advocates and organizers for "women in open source" projects, launched the Ada Initiative (TAI) on February 7 to "concentrate on focused, direct action programs, including recruitment and training for women, education for community members, and working with companies and projects to improve their outreach to women". While the first steps for the initiative are somewhat bureaucratic—filling out paperwork to put the organization on a sound legal footing along with raising the funds that it needs—TAI has some concrete plans for projects that it will be working on.

At the top of the priority list, according to Aurora, is a survey that will measure the participation of women in the open technology and culture communities. This would be something of an update to the FLOSSPOLS survey that was done in 2006. TAI is working on a methodology for the survey, so that it can be repeated over time to gauge progress. The survey is meant to answer a very fundamental question, Aurora said: "How bad is the problem, and is what we are doing making things better? If we can't answer these questions, we can't do a good job."

Another project in the works is "First Patch Week", which will be an effort to pair companies and projects with female developers to help get the new developers over the first hurdle in joining a development community: submitting their first patch. The idea is that the existing community supplies mentors who have been trained by TAI to bring these new developers along, and it will be beneficial to both sides: "Participating in First Patch Week is an excellent opportunity to get new developers working on your project (with the potential of hiring them later on, of course)." Like the survey, First Patch Week is going to take some time to get up and running, but once past the organizational set-up phase, TAI intends to put in "several months of full time effort" to find the right projects and train mentors.

So far, the response to the initiative has been "amazing", Aurora said, with inquiries from "enormous international corporations" as well as community organizations and individuals. TAI is in discussions with multiple sponsors, but it is really looking for more than money:

At this point, we are focusing on sponsors who want to do more than write a check: donate engineer time, help organize meetings, run scholarships, give us advice on fundraising, or otherwise help us with things money can't buy.

Linux Australia is the first TAI sponsor, and is providing some general sponsorship money that Aurora described as a "do the right thing" sponsorship. Because the organization is so small, general sponsorships, rather than those focused on a specific project, are what it is looking for. There's still plenty of room to become a sponsor, but "if your organization would like to be a founding member of the Ada Initiative, now is the time to be talking to us."

Discussions on the supporters mailing list have focused on individual contributions. While that is not the kind of funding TAI is looking for in the long term, it would help with the start-up process, so there will be some means of doing that (possibly through a Kickstarter campaign) coming soon. But there are ways to help beyond just the financial:

The best way to support the Ada Initiative right now is to encourage other people in your organization to support us. Right now we have people helping by writing checks, but also by offering meeting space, travel funding, pro bono legal advice, event planning, and the like.

If you want to you help, you should also sign up for one of our myriad announcement channels - Twitter, blog, etc. - and we will make announcements as we have opportunities for people to contribute.

It is clear from the FAQ that TAI hopes that fundraising will provide the financial resources to allow the organization to dig into projects that are difficult or impossible for all-volunteer organizations to take on. By providing salaries to its employees (eventually, anyway), those people can concentrate solely on the projects, rather than having to work on them in "evening and weekend" time. It is a different style than that taken by existing organizations, such as LinuxChix and AussieChix, but one that TAI believes will be beneficial to the whole ecosystem, as Aurora pointed out:

In general, our theory is that the majority of people in open technology and culture really want women to be involved and welcome - they just don't know how to do it. Our goal is to give these people the information and opportunity to accomplish this. Whenever we do a project, the project itself is just the first step. Documenting what we did and teaching other people to reproduce it is just as important.

The announcement was met with an "excited and supportive" reception, which, along with the sponsors that seem to be lining up, should bode well for TAI. According to Aurora, the initiative expects to be fully funded and working full-time on its projects by July. That means we should start seeing concrete results from those efforts in the latter half of the year. Gardiner and Aurora created TAI because it was "the right thing" to do, Aurora said, and they have been pleasantly surprised with the reaction from the rest of the open technology and culture communities:

What we didn't realize was the intensity of frustrated desire that many people have about helping women in open technology and culture. People desperately want to do something about the injustice and imbalance they see around themselves every day in the tech community. We're finally giving people an outlet for all that energy.

The Ada Initiative—named for Countess Ada Lovelace, "the world's first woman open source programmer"—is a very interesting experiment. It will not only provide ways to increase the participation of women in free software and related fields, which is worthwhile goal in itself, but it may also provide an example of how to fund organizations focused on other specific initiatives within our communities.

There are a number of similar kinds of organizations in our community, the foundations for Linux, GNOME, and Apache for example, but those tend to be larger, umbrella organizations, whereas TAI is tightly focused on a well-defined, existing problem. There are certainly other technical and social problems in our communities that might benefit from a similar approach. More women in open technology and culture would be a fabulous outcome from this experiment, and finding more ways to fund interesting projects would just be icing on the cake.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 17, 2011 4:15 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (5 responses)

This is one article that I wish wasn't subscriber-only. I'd like to share it widely, via e-mail, blog, facebook, etc. It would be of interest to many people who aren't likely to be interested in LWN in general. Oh well, I'll try to remember in a week...

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 17, 2011 4:23 UTC (Thu) by jake (editor, #205) [Link] (4 responses)

> I'd like to share it widely, via e-mail, blog, facebook, etc.

That's just what we have subscriber links for ... please feel free to share!

jake

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 17, 2011 4:46 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (3 responses)

I know about the subscriber link, but is it OK to include it in a blog, for example? (I have seen such links on slashdot and I know I can do it in principle -- was just not sure if such things are OK with you guys.)

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 17, 2011 5:00 UTC (Thu) by jake (editor, #205) [Link] (1 responses)

> I know about the subscriber link, but is it OK to include it in a blog, for example?

Yes indeed. The idea is that subscribers have an opportunity to point out good (or even bad, I suppose -- hopefully not too many of those :) articles to their friends, colleagues, blog readers, and so on. Some of those folks may become LWN readers, and some of those may become subscribers.

Beyond that, it is one of the privileges of being an LWN subscriber.

So far, we have seen relatively little (or no) abuse of subscriber links, which is not really all that surprising, given the kinds of readers we tend to attract.

jake

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 17, 2011 6:07 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Ok, thanks!

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 17, 2011 13:50 UTC (Thu) by gevaerts (subscriber, #21521) [Link]

Blogs are actually explicitely listed as OK in the FAQ: http://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn#slinks

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 17, 2011 12:44 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (28 responses)

Privoxy blocks the adainitiative.org URL, but that's just a minor issue. I'm really interested in that "How bad is the problem" question. The FAQ mentions that the "industry standard" is 20-30% of the workforce is female. However, since primary school I haven't seen more than 10% in "computer environment". Maybe if accountants, assistants, secretaries, managers, cleaners, etc. are counted, then this figure is higher, but then the statistics is not that useful. The mentioned 2-5% of open source developers is still lower then the 10% I see, but in order to increase it to the "ideal" around 50%, one have to work on nursery schools to let girls play with "boy toys" instead of restricting them to dolls. This, of course, would mean confrontation with other women...

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 17, 2011 13:16 UTC (Thu) by jondkent (guest, #19595) [Link]

I'm also interested in the "How bad is the problem" question. Having a daughter gives this question the edge, but also makes me wonder if there really is a problem at all, or whether this is simply an case of limited interest?

With very little statistics that is hard to quantify. I honestly doubt there will ever be 50/50 (though great if this did occur). There have been so many of these initiatives in the past, but I just can't help thinking that they all fail because its a problem that just doesn't really exist (by which I mean the ratio will not increase that much).

Good luck and all thank, but somehow I can't help feeling this'll just go the way of the rest.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 17, 2011 14:48 UTC (Thu) by mrjk (subscriber, #48482) [Link] (3 responses)

My anecdotal evidence is that we have regressed. I taught assembly language and architecture in the early 1990's and had 20 to 30% of classes being female in an urban university. Maybe we were just an outlier, but there sure seems to be less women in my nephew's classes the last couple years.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 17, 2011 16:20 UTC (Thu) by eean (subscriber, #50420) [Link]

No, this is in line with other statistics I've heard.

I graduated a few years ago and have never worked with a female programmer on a project. (and to be clear, I'm no in a position to really pick who I work with heh). It's easy to see how it might be intimidating to often be the first female programmer your co-workers have ever worked with.

and there also seems to be a sieve: very few females in Comp Sci programs but then even less as open source developers.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 17, 2011 21:56 UTC (Thu) by maco (guest, #53641) [Link] (1 responses)

Absolutely. Remember, 70 years ago, programming was women's work.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 18, 2011 10:12 UTC (Fri) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]

One of our computer science teachers said that back in the 70s the computer science classes were full of women. Of course, at that time they didn't actually use computers very much... Then came the generation that grew up playing (and coding) on C-64 and the gender ratio changed drastically.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 17, 2011 22:03 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (22 responses)

one [would] have to work on nursery schools to let girls play with "boy toys" instead of restricting them to dolls.

I suspect one would have to do more than let girls play with boy toys; one would have to require it. I think girls play with dolls when given the choice.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 17, 2011 22:07 UTC (Thu) by maco (guest, #53641) [Link] (17 responses)

Well when the only toys your parents buy you for the first 2-3 years of your life are dolls, it's no surprise that they're all you know how to play with by the time you're able to pick out toys on your own.

Gender role indoctrination starts at birth. What's the first thing asked of any new baby? "Is it a boy or a girl?" That way they know how to treat it to turn it into whatever stereotype they think it should be. And that way they know whether it needs pink & lace or blue & dinosaurs.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 19, 2011 22:17 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (16 responses)

I suspect 'is it a boy or a girl' is a very early question because we have no non-gender-specific pronouns in English, and it sounds disrespectful (and vaguely creepy) to ask about 'it'. (I checked: it was the first question asked about me, but only so that my mother knew the right pronoun to use in the second question, 'will he live?': but that doesn't mean that, had I been female, she would have been happy to see me die!)

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 20, 2011 17:44 UTC (Sun) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (15 responses)

"are they a boy or a girl?" - long-standing & perfectly acceptable practice in english.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 20, 2011 18:12 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (5 responses)

Actually it sounds a bit odd if you're asking that about a single definite person. When the number is unknown, or you could be referring to people over a span of time, that usage is perfectly normal.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 20, 2011 18:46 UTC (Sun) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (4 responses)

The gender however isn't definite. You have multiple possibilities, thus singular they is still quite appropriate. As an unscientific test, google shows 94 results for "are they a boy or a girl" v 480 for "is it a boy or a girl".

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 21, 2011 0:40 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (3 responses)

In general, I think, "is it a boy or a girl" is the only question in which that usage is acceptable, and likely only because "it" is elliptical for "your new baby". (Yes, I spend too much time on Language Log.

I spend a lot of time in a *lot* of geeky technical environments, and I have since 1983, when I joined Usenet. I tend to concur with those people who suggest that there is, in fact, just some facet of sex-linked development that makes females less inclined towards such pursuits then males.

Let me take a moment and make a preemptive strike on the strawman arguments which *do not* represent correctly what I've just asserted:

1) Women aren't as good as... Nope. Just said fewer were interested in bothering.

10) Women aren't allowed to... These days? We're at least 2 full generations past women's lib; if not, then it isn't the fault of men. :-)

11) Men chase the women off... Well, this one may have a small amount of currency to it, but I don't think it's any organized movement or anything; it's merely the same sex-linked differences that you'll see if you examine same-sex relationships as a whole, frex, as compared to cross-sex relationships; women and men *are different*, and anyone who will tell you that they aren't Has An Agenda.

100) Men scare the women off... This one's slightly different from 11, above, and we've already discussed it here at length. It amounts to Some Men Are Assholes, and since men are a much higher percentage of the audience we're talking about, of course the fact that just as high a percentage of Women Are Assholes is going to be immaterial. The geekiness and the assholiness are generally not linked all that tightly, IMO, so the proportion isn't disproportionate... but it's unreasonable to expect the overall behavior of a significantly sized subset to be that much different from that of the entire set.

101) Look at SF Cons: Women have made great strides there; why not in tech/OSS/geekiness? I'll catch the most shit for this one: look at what the women are *doing*. The overall numbers in panels and such haven't changed all that much in my experience; they're 70/30 to 50/50 male. But cosplay and related things seem to skew wildly female, from what I see, which levels out the numbers here in a fashion which isn't applicable to the topic we're really on about here.

I heartily encourage the Initiative, and I hope they accomplish something useful. I'm just not sure how much they're fighting human nature, and whether it would even be a good thing if they won.

Gedankenexperiment: you can stomp out every form and degree of autism, tomorrow, by snapping your fingers. Does society benefit?

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 21, 2011 8:31 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Autism and sexism are not comparable. People afflicted by milder forms of autism may consider it beneficial (I know I do, and certainly wiping it out would change my personality so much that I wouldn't be *me* anymore).

I don't know any women who are against wiping out sexism, certainly not on the grounds that not being discriminated against would change their lives so much that they wouldn't be *them* anymore. It's an unadulterated Bad for the discriminated-against.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 21, 2011 11:52 UTC (Mon) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (1 responses)

It's not about sexism, it's about the human nature (or very early social conditioning) that boys go after toy cars and girls go after dolls even before their 2nd birthday.

By the way, I heard about an example where "wiping out sexism" was bad. The German Navy let women join (in order to avoid sexism). They also lowered some physical acceptance tests for them, because women are generally weaker/smaller than man. The consequence was that some 158 cm tall women got to climb masts, then consequently fall off, because they didn't have the reach to grab some pole or something.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 21, 2011 19:12 UTC (Mon) by Darkmere (subscriber, #53695) [Link]

> It's not about sexism, it's about the human nature (or very early social
> conditioning) that boys go after toy cars and girls go after dolls even
> before their 2nd birthday.

Early social conditioning appears to be the thing, there was a few studies going on about how tone of voice and facial expressions when giving children their items lead them to vastly different behaviours.

Basically, small children are pattern-matching information sponges, and they do cross-channel absorption of information to the point where they decide how to act based on sub-channels that "adults" have stopped noticing to the same degree.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 20, 2011 18:33 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (8 responses)

"are they a boy or a girl?" - long-standing & perfectly acceptable practice in english.

Acceptable to some. Some speakers of English don't accept this at all.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 20, 2011 19:30 UTC (Sun) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Well, then those speakers'll need to avoid Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen, etc...

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 20, 2011 19:52 UTC (Sun) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (6 responses)

Well, they would be fighting against a long and distinguished history of using plurals as a more formal / honorific variant of the corresponding singular pronouns. For example, consider the royal use of "we" in place of "I", or the use of "thou" when referring to an individual. ("Thou" was the plural form of "you" before it fell into disuse.) Substituting "they" for "he" or "she" is just another variant on the same pattern.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 20, 2011 20:23 UTC (Sun) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (2 responses)

No, the plural form of "you" is "ye", and it's still in regular use (in wide parts of the British isles, by geography - northern england, some scottish dialects, Ireland). An equivalent modern corruption is also in use in places: "yous". Plural "you" is perhaps one of the few simplifications of english grammar that is clamouring to be undone.

"Thou" and "thee" are also still in daily use, though restricted to parts of northern england.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 20, 2011 21:01 UTC (Sun) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

Thanks for the correction. Here in the U.S. we don't hear "ye" or "thee" or "thou" very much, so it's easy to get them wrong. To add to the confusion, "ye" is more often used (mistakenly) in place of "the" in names like "Ye Olde Towne Square" simply because an older version of the alphabet used a symbol for "th" which looks rather like a modern "y".

Wikipedia has a table of English personal pronoun forms, including "thou"/"ye" and "thee"/"you", for those who, like myself, tend to mix them up: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou#Declension>.

Anyway, it's nice to know that these older forms are still in use elsewhere in the world. I thought they'd died out long ago.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 25, 2011 21:19 UTC (Fri) by steffen780 (guest, #68142) [Link]

I lived in the NW and NE England (Leeds and Manchester) from 2002 to 2010 (including sharing a flat/house with people from e.g. Widnes, Bradford, Huddersfield and Sheffield) and I have never heard or seen "ye", "thou" or "thee" except in pub names, bible references/quotes and similiar contexts. Maybe it's still used in villages, but they're certainly not in daily use in the cities.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 20, 2011 21:25 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (2 responses)

I don't think the fact that formal and plural pronouns are identical has any bearing on whether gender neutral and plural pronouns are identical.

I also don't think people use Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Austen as their standard for modern English.

What people accept is determined mostly by what they hear in the street, which means lots of people accept singular they. But for some, it is determined more by what they were taught and read in style manuals, and for some, logic. Those things tend to make people not accept singular they.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 20, 2011 21:49 UTC (Sun) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

The original complaint was for the want of a singular, gender-indefinite pronoun. The logic of the response is that such things *do* exist in english, & have both long history of *and* continuing modern use.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 20, 2011 22:25 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

I don't know about the logic of the response, but the response literally said "are they a boy or a girl" is "perfectly acceptable." On the contrary, it is imperfectly acceptable, as a significant number of people do not accept it. Anyone considering using that sentence should bear that in mind.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 19, 2011 22:26 UTC (Sat) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link] (3 responses)

>I suspect one would have to do more than let girls play with boy toys; one would have to require it. I think girls play with dolls when given the choice.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1266364/Wh...

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 19, 2011 23:16 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

That link is to the Daily Mail, which is filled with what linguists call 'bullshit' (yes, really): i.e., they do not care about the truth value of what they publish and will make things up, falsify quotes, and generally lie brazenly for any reason at all, or for no reason whatsoever. Distrust it completely. It is almost certainly misquoted and is probably entirely inverted from the truth (since the results are suspiciously close to what the Daily Mail's Little Englander readership would prefer to read).

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 19, 2011 23:49 UTC (Sat) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link] (1 responses)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/8624999.stm
better for you?

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 19, 2011 23:51 UTC (Sat) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]

another discussion of studies, from a year prior:
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2009/06/six-month-...
http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2009/06/even_at_si...

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 17, 2011 15:59 UTC (Thu) by randomguy3 (subscriber, #71063) [Link]

I think the founders of the Ada Initiative do Ada Lovelace a disservice: she is arguably the world's first programmer, full stop.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 17, 2011 17:00 UTC (Thu) by zander76 (guest, #6889) [Link] (17 responses)

I am sure the objective is good but the more I see stuff like this, the harder it is for me to swallow.

When you join an open source project do you need to answer questions like:
Are you male, female or transgender?
Are you black, white, yellow, green or purple?
Are you gay or straight?
No you don't and I have never thought to ask hey what sex, color are you or if they are a member of a fanatical group.

It's the internet and the same anonymity that protects gamers and allows them to be dick heads at times is the same one that makes everybody equal. Promoting ones sex, religion, color or foot size for that matter only separates people.

I am a white male and the internet is one of the few places left that I am not discriminated against. Seems funny that a white person would say that but this is 2011. I didn't take part in not letting women vote, slavery or stealing land from natives. So I want a "white male support group that gives me a job".

No wonder the amount of white hate groups are on the rise. I shouldn't have to feel guilty because I was born as a white male. I am no more special then anybody else :)

Ben

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 17, 2011 18:18 UTC (Thu) by tetromino (guest, #33846) [Link] (5 responses)

> When you join an open source project do you need to answer questions like:
> Are you male, female or transgender?

In effect, yes. Many serious open source projects ask that contributors use their real-life names (some projects even require that account names be based on full, real-life names), and real-life names are usually gender-specific.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 17, 2011 21:55 UTC (Thu) by maco (guest, #53641) [Link] (4 responses)

KDE has the same requirement for its accounts.

In a similar vein: whether you are asked your gender identity or not, you can still be made to feel unwelcome for it. If some people just assume that *everyone* else is a dude and so feel free to be a bit boys-locker-room about things (sexist jokes, stereotyping, linking to pictures of women they find attractive wearing very little, etc), that can make some women very uncomfortable. Generally, discomfort leads to something changing to get rid of it. Leaving is a lot easier than fixing the discomfort-inducing behaviours.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 18, 2011 13:14 UTC (Fri) by jondkent (guest, #19595) [Link]

Agree with your point, but that doesn't appear to be what Ada is about. It would appear to be a hand holding initiative. Taking your point, Ada would appear not address them at all.

From looking at their web page it is very hard to see exactly what is it Ada is providing here. There is very little firm details on how they propose to implement the ideals.

If it was my money, I'd put it to use elsewhere.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 21, 2011 1:02 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (1 responses)

> that can make some women very uncomfortable.

I know, because I've met them, that it can make many *men* uncomfortable, as well. No one's sticking up for them, yet they arguably have it worse.

But, no one's holding a gun to any developer's head saying "you must work on this specific project", last time I checked.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 21, 2011 8:33 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Yes, it can make men uncomfortable. The solution here is not to say 'bugger off, you lot, the people here who are making you uncomfortable have right of way, oh, and if they come into your *own* project and do the same there, you can sod off then too'. It's to *stop* these people doing things that make people feel uncomfortable. It's not as if locker-room talk is technically necessary or even mildly beneficial to the project, and it's not as if avoiding locker-room talk is going to freeze the social atmosphere into a hell of formality, either. It's just going to make it a more pleasant environment for everyone who isn't a boor.

Crudeness is never appropriate; it's a matter of the heart

Posted Feb 27, 2011 8:33 UTC (Sun) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link]

If behaviors are making women uncomfortable, those behaviors ought to make men uncomfortable as well. Such behaviors aren't appropriate for public venues, regardless of the sex of the audience.

So the issue, then, is not one of changing behaviors to accommodate women, but changing behaviors to eliminate crudeness, period.

Good luck.

Besides, anyone who is coerced to restrict his crude behavior for the sake of females will likely resent said females, thereby having the opposite effect than was intended. Fail.

The things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. So the real issue, then, is one of changing people's hearts. And there is only one true solution to that.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 17, 2011 21:58 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

When you join an open source project do you need to answer questions like: Are you male, female or transgender? ...

But what is your point? It sounds like you are arguing against a position that no one has taken: people won't let women work on open source projects.

The only statements I see in this area are that women aren't working on open source projects. And that that's a bad thing.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 18, 2011 14:39 UTC (Fri) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] (1 responses)

I can assure you that white men, particularly educated white men, are still the advantaged group in the UK, though less so than 40 years ago. We don't generally get suspected of obtaining our promotions at work in a supine position. We don't get asked at tech conferences whose husband / boyfriend / gigolo we are. We don't get catcalls from the workers on building sites. We don't have social pressure to have more variety of clothing than "enough to be able to wear clean clothes every day while only doing the laundry once a week". Nobody feels the need to make satirical references to being arrested on suspicion of being white in charge of a Mercedes Benz.

As for hate groups, the bulk of the membership tends to consist of people (often of low socioeconomic status) persuaded by demagogues to see the Other - rather than themselves, the System, or the people who run the System - as the source of their problems.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 19, 2011 22:52 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Nobody feels the need to make satirical references to being arrested on suspicion of being white in charge of a Mercedes Benz.

Although being white and a banker is probably a thing best concealed at present.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 19, 2011 20:50 UTC (Sat) by geofft (subscriber, #59789) [Link] (3 responses)

Sure, you do need to answer questions about whether you're male or female -- if you want people to talk about your work at all, they're going to need a pronoun to refer to you.

You could attempt to get people to use the wrong one, but this will get you in trouble if anyone who does know whether you're male or female or whatnot ever refers to you. (And you will need to pick one, either way.)

I'm not white, but I am male and I am from a relatively privileged race, and I'm not entirely happy that things are easier for me than average because of these two things. I don't like it that people subconsciously probably assume a little more competence from me when my e-mail address or Signed-Off-By line reveals my name. I want my work to be accepted on its own merits.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 19, 2011 23:11 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Quite so. Also, I feel uneasy when my real name goes into anything for a terribly English reason: it feels too much like boasting.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 20, 2011 16:39 UTC (Sun) by Tet (guest, #5433) [Link] (1 responses)

You're a perfect example of why it doesn't matter. I spent years not knowing anything about you apart from the name "nix". But it really wasn't relevant. You could have been black, white, brown, yellow, male, female or something in between. I wouldn't have cared. You were clearly competent in the necessary areas, which was all that mattered.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 21, 2011 19:34 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Exactly. Real names don't matter: *consistent* names and no sock-puppeting matter (so that you can build up a reputation, for good or ill). The 'must use your real name' things are unenforceable anyway, because people can say their real name is anything they like: as PaXTeam (I think) has pointed out, it is almost certain that things have got into the kernel under pseudonyms simply because the chosen pseudonyms looked like real names. So this sort of policy discriminates against those who have honest reasons to want to use a pseudonym, while not deterring bad actors one bit.

(For that matter, people have -- repeatedly -- referred to me using the wrong gendered pronoun. Huge innate differences between men and women, my foot.)

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 21, 2011 13:28 UTC (Mon) by job (guest, #670) [Link] (1 responses)

> I am a white male

<irony>No kidding? I could never have guessed.</irony>

> the internet is one of the few places left that I am not discriminated against

You have absolutely no idea what systematic discrimination means. With the statement you just made, you executed one of your rights as a cultural majority: Speaking out on subjects you barely know. Very few members of a minority would speak out as if their opinions were matters of fact.

(With this comment I do the same. The irony here does not escape me, but the subject is much too important to leave certain opinions unchallenged.)

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 25, 2011 5:26 UTC (Fri) by quartz (guest, #37351) [Link]

That's ridiculous, I'm a white male living in a different culture, under a different language, and I can tell you I suffered plenty of discrimination.

All it takes is not being like "average" in the local group (your office, your neighbourhood, even the pub or club you're in).

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 27, 2011 8:25 UTC (Sun) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link] (1 responses)

Right on, brother. Reverse discrimination makes me sick.

One of the reasons racism and sexism are still problems in some venues is that some people won't let them die.

In a way, claiming that there should be a certain ratio of male-to-female in anything is hypocritical from those who clamor for equality, because equality is really about freedom--having freedom equal to anyone else's freedom, regardless of sex, race, etc. People of both sexes are free (or ought to be free) to choose their activities and interests. No one ought to be telling women (or men) to be involved in (or not be involved in) whatever projects they choose because of an artificial problem of male/female ratio.

And, in fact, what is happening is more attention is being drawn to people's sex, which is the antithesis of the equality movements (which go too far when they attempt to erase differences between the sexes)! It's being made more of an issue instead of less of an issue.

Just let people do what they want. Yeesh.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Mar 3, 2011 22:52 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I think letting people do what they want is unacceptable when 'what they want' includes intimidating, threatening, or outright assaulting women.

Which is, it seems, a lot of the problem.

The Ada Initiative takes a different approach

Posted Feb 24, 2011 8:01 UTC (Thu) by xl0 (guest, #52696) [Link]

http://pics.livejournal.com/zaitcev/pic/0006h581

Sad, but so true.

Problem?

Posted Feb 27, 2011 8:08 UTC (Sun) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link]

Why is it a problem? In most societies nowadays, both men and women are free to pursue the career path of their choice, as well as their hobbies. If there are simply fewer women than men who are interested in FOSS development, or programming in general, so be it. Who cares?

The only potential problem would be if some projects were to discriminate against women and discourage their participation. If this were to happen, the freedom of FOSS makes it easy to fork projects to new leadership which doesn't care about the sex of contributors, leaving the previous leadership in the dust.

I'm not sure of their goal here, but if it is a 50/50 balance, or one approximately so, IMHO that's unrealistic and wasteful.

Let's pursue freedom. Let people do what they want. If that results in a certain male/female ratio among certain projects, who cares? Saying that more women need to be involved is, in principle, almost as bad as saying that fewer women need to be involved. Let people choose for themselves.