To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet) [LWN.net]

To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 29, 2007 1:25 UTC (Sat) by ikm (guest, #493)
Parent article: To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Men and women are different. People are doing what they want. What is the point? Furthermore, what makes someone think there is no place for women in the communities, given that they actually want to take that place?

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To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 29, 2007 6:50 UTC (Sat) by tetromino (guest, #33846) [Link] (5 responses)

>Men and women are different. People are doing what they want.
Sure, most boys like guns and most girls like barbies. But that's not the point. The point is, a good number of women *do* want to join the free software community, and it would be helpful if we don't insult them and push them away. We need all the hands we can get, so being unnecessarily hostile to potential recruits is simply idiotic.

To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 29, 2007 16:22 UTC (Sat) by tuxchick (guest, #42009) [Link] (4 responses)

Thank you, this is the core of the issue- at the very least, don't drive away people who would like to contribute. It doesn't matter if it's a paid job or unpaid volunteer; there comes a point where it's just not worth dealing with chronic idiocy and hostile jerks. Tolerating toxic behavior is a big weakness in a lot of FOSS projects, and it's not like excluding the jerks is a loss anyway, because they rarely contribute anything useful.

To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 29, 2007 23:56 UTC (Sat) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link]

Wow, let's just stereotype the men. Oops, I forgot that it is OK to bash white males.

Sorry

</Sarcasm>

To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 30, 2007 0:12 UTC (Sun) by ikm (guest, #493) [Link] (1 responses)

Actually, I never saw that hostile behavior myself -- quite the contrary, a girl trying to be involved was always welcomed with applause, and a girl actually involved in the community was typically regarded as a queen of that community. This was a Russian-only experience, anyway, so maybe this thing everyone is talking here about is US-specific or whatever. I never understood the elitism problem, as in all the situations I saw all the "leet" guys were rightly treated like jerks -- no one liked that attitude, really.

Different approach, different result

Posted Sep 30, 2007 12:37 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

It's easy to explain.

In Russia woman does not expect that anyone will change the whole system "to make it more user-friendly for women". She comes as foreigner who just want to "fit it". And everyone knows that it's not easy, it requires courage and bravery to do so. That is something to be admired. And while woman can complain when she's confronted with sexism and porn ("guys, this is too much - can you remove this picture?") she knows it's "male world" and she can only ask for so much. She's an immigrant in a foreign country and she knows that she can ask for help but she can not ask for a change of laws. Of course this means people will try to help: their positions are not threatened and women usually don't ask for too much.

In US woman expect the "equal footing" from the start. She demands to remove all discriminating elements as prerequisite ("this is just a list of the things that make women feel unwelcome" => there will be more demands in the future). Because it's "just wrong". The idea that it may be wrong but it's "law of the land" is not even considered. In short: she acts as an invader. She's not even "in the community" yet she already demands to change the laws of the community. Of course it leads to vitriol and hate. What's to admire in an occupant ?

To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 30, 2007 12:52 UTC (Sun) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

>Thank you, this is the core of the issue- at the very least, don't drive away people who would like to contribute. It doesn't matter if it's a paid job or unpaid volunteer; there comes a point where it's just not worth dealing with chronic idiocy and hostile jerks. Tolerating toxic behavior is a big weakness in a lot of FOSS projects, and it's not like excluding the jerks is a loss anyway, because they rarely contribute anything useful.

The thing is, this issue really has little to do with women specifically. Being/tolerating toxic jerks will drive away otherwise willing contributors, period.

I guess this is one of my pet peeves -- people making something out to be a "women's issue" when, like most serious problems, it transcends gender entirely.

(feel free to substitute "women" with "religion X" or "country Y" or "arbitrary identifier Z" at your discretion..)

One interesting statistic

Posted Sep 29, 2007 10:03 UTC (Sat) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (4 responses)

I think the reason this is worth talking about is that, in proprietary software development, the percentage of women is higher than it is in free software development.

This might indicate that we're doing something wrong, in terms of fostering an inclusive (read as: large) contributor base.

For the free software movement, it'd be great if that huge section of society participated more.

Maybe there is a natural reason for the numbers being so low, but maybe there's not. For that much benefit, it's worth looking into the topic.

One interesting statistic

Posted Oct 1, 2007 12:07 UTC (Mon) by gravious (guest, #7662) [Link] (3 responses)

Rather than indicating that we're doing something wrong it may be simply because women may choose more secure orthodox roles over non-conformist roles. In the sense that the Free Software movement is unorthodox/unknown territory/financially unrewarding/somewhat revolutionary then if the personality traits that cut across gender come into play here then we might see a natural gender imbalance. Also, if what you say is true (is there data?) and the percentage of women is higher in proprietary software than free software then why does it have to be a reflection on the men in free software? Why can it not be a reflection on the choices that women make?

Let's remove the plank from our own eye first.

Posted Oct 2, 2007 17:37 UTC (Tue) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link] (2 responses)

Suppose we write a program that makes some calculation error. Could this be a bug in the compiler or some external library? Yes, but we should suspect our own code first. Only after we're certain that it's correct is it reasonable to consider blaming some other component.

We can't control the choices women make but we can take steps to make our community more welcoming to them. Let's find out what happens if we try.

Let's remove the plank from our own eye first.

Posted Oct 14, 2007 14:28 UTC (Sun) by gravious (guest, #7662) [Link] (1 responses)

Sorry... 12 days later...

Sure, regards taking steps - we should reprogram misogynists and deplore advertising that uses curves to sell wares. But shouldn't we be doing that anyway? (By being empathic sheeple I mean.) Are we suggesting that FOSS nerds/geeks are less mindful of women than the average Joe Bloggs. The thing is, we don't know if this _is_ a bug or calculation error in our code. Having said that I am all for following the "get your own house in order before you go trying to spring-clean others" dictum :)

Let's remove the plank from our own eye first.

Posted Oct 14, 2007 20:06 UTC (Sun) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

Are we suggesting that FOSS nerds/geeks are less mindful of women than the average Joe Bloggs.

Maybe. Unfortunately, we can be pretty sure something is going on with FOSS in particular, because female participation in FOSS is lower than in practically anything else. There are a higher proportion of female *construction workers* -- by reputation, at least, one of the most male-dominated and misogynistic fields out there -- than there are female FOSS contributors (see).