Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ? [LWN.net]

Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ?

Posted Sep 29, 2007 19:08 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: women, get into IT... or else by tuxchick
Parent article: To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

To me it looks more like discussed issue was "we have not enough women in the IT - how to bring them en masse?". And to me this looks like a totally bogus issue. If the real question is about "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where the hell is the list of said problems ?

My reaction to this discussion is akin to Linus and Co reaction to responsibility issue. We should measure problems somehow before we'll try to find the solutions - any other way is idiotic. Yet when "women in FOSS" problem is raised this step is invariably omitted. People look on statistic, note that there are very few women and start creating schemes to change situation. What for ? To improve cuteness factor among FOSS developers ?

Yes, if there are some real problems which affect women but somehow don't affect men (ditto for other groups of people) - it's important to discuss them. But I'm yet to see any such coherent list - just accusations that if I don't accept existence such of problems on faith without proof I'm misogynist and must be punished.

I do believe that all real barriers which only affect women must be discussed (end eventually fixed). Inequality of starting positions are bad - no matter if we talk about african-descended peoples or women. But to treat "low number of women" as a problem in itself - it's just stupid.

One such problem (related to conferences where noone want to talk with women because they know "women in booths are there for eye candy reasons") was discussed and solution looks like acceptable short-term solution: male coworker can send half of incomers to female who's not getting enough attentions since people are seeking information and not eye candy. Good. Problem obviously exist, there are no questions about it - and while solution is not good long-term solution it's acceptable as short-term solution. Can we have list of such problems instead of trying to lure women by questionable means ?

to post comments

Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ?

Posted Sep 29, 2007 23:20 UTC (Sat) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link] (59 responses)

Since you asked for a list: threats of sexual assault via e-mail; disparagement of women's abilities, in these very comments no less; objectification of women as sexual objects -- post a comment as a female to Slashdot and you'll see what I mean; sexist advertising in major Linux journals; soft porn images in illustrations in major Linux journals.

That is just a list of the things that make women feel unwelcome. Imagine how different the FOSS community attitudes would need to be to make women feel welcome. Counter-example 1 in that list would be ESR's recent comment on LWN.

Statistically, we can be pretty sure that FOSS discriminates against women because there is no evidence of the reverse case. If FOSS were discrimination-free then we would see a rise in women's participation in IT employment as FOSS became more widely used. Of course, this has not occurred -- the participation of women in the IT workforce keeps worsening.

What I find most disheartening about the whole thing is that simple lack of willingness to admit we have a problem. Look at the number of comments in this thread, most denying the obvious. FOSS has long argued that people should have a willingness to change. But faced with such change itself FOSS engages in the same myopia it accuses in supporters of proprietary software.

Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ?

Posted Sep 30, 2007 1:41 UTC (Sun) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] (53 responses)

> threats of sexual assault via e-mail

Again these email threats... As has been noted by others, very much like McBride's. If you consider these real, contact police. Otherwise - ignore as the rest of your spam. In fact, I wonder how these emails didn't end up in your spam folder automatically.

> disparagement of women's abilities, in these very comments no less;

There were statements that men and women are different, including IQ distributions. So what? Either these are false - prove it, otherwise what's point of arguing against a fact of our current nature? More to the point, though, nobody said that women should be _pre_judged based on the sole fact they are not males; if a given woman has the desire/abilities/etc to fill a job - fine (more than fine, I'd personally say).

> objectification of women as sexual objects -- post a comment as a female to Slashdot and you'll see what I mean

I never post on /. and read it only sporadically (mostly when linked from a more respectable site). Now may I ask you - what kind of post it was that caused such a response - was it a techie one or you tried to promote something feminist? In the latter case, it's not a surprise you got a correspondingly polarized reply (not that I approve it...). Please provide a demo link.

> sexist advertising in major Linux journals;

I disagree to call these "sexist". Anyway, I understand what you mean. You know, the purpose of ads is to drive potential clients in. Ads cost money. These ads, apparently, pay for the money spent. By the time (and <extralarge>IF</extralarge>) there is a 50/50 gender balance in the field, either a) the ads will feature both genders equally as well or b) will disappear if a majority find them offensive (so they actually drive potential buyers off).

> Statistically, we can be pretty sure that FOSS discriminates against women because there is no evidence of the reverse case.

I wonder where you studied logics...

> If FOSS were discrimination-free then we would see a rise in women's participation in IT employment as FOSS became more widely used.

??? Don't see a logics here either. Why a movement, by the sole virtue of becoming more popular, should become more attractive to women than to men?

> What I find most disheartening about the whole thing is that simple lack of willingness to admit we have a problem.

Let's not call something "a problem" before it's proven as such. There is a statistical fact - there are significantly more men than women among the FLOSS community. It's only a problem ONLY IF caused by a direct discrimination. So let's talk about cases of discrimination - and we all must do our best to fix these. Anything else - I beg your pardon...

> Look at the number of comments in this thread, most denying the obvious.

You also have problems with math. Please count which comments you consider as cons. From what I can tell, an absolute majority are sympathetic.

> FOSS has long argued that people should have a willingness to change.

Right. Change it! Why the hell you're considering the status-quo as a result of a gift from the $DEITY that was seized by those rude males? Wasn't the overwhelming majority of the FOSS projects started by single developers in their free time - and most of them were males? Who is preventing a motivated group of women from forming a female-only mailing list/forum/what not and come up after a while with a rival OS or killer app? Don't talk about inequalities, show the equality! (And before someone happily starts providing examples - yes I know there ARE such projects/significant contributions/etc; I'm talking about statistics - use lines of code or any other metrics you wish).

> But faced with such change itself FOSS engages in the same myopia it accuses in supporters of proprietary software.

And, please stop accusing all and everyone by calling all of us "FOSS". BTW, do you consider yourself a member of FOSS? Then you've got that myopia disease, too. Oh, that male chauvinist logics again...

Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ?

Posted Sep 30, 2007 4:02 UTC (Sun) by tuxchick (guest, #42009) [Link] (35 responses)

You just don't want to admit there is a problem, and would rather rail on
and on dismissing everything we say. Proof? There is no proof that will
satisfy you. The proof is already all around you- in the statements of
women who are reporting their experiences, in the daily activities in
forums, mail lists, and IRC. You seem to think we are inventing all these
stories for fun. Or perhaps are hysterical. Why are you so keen to shoot
down what we are saying- does it threaten you in some way?

What we are advocating for is to be treated with courtesy and respect.
Just as any human deserves. Perhaps you think this is unreasonable? It
will not inconvenience in the slightest the many fine FOSS people who
already do this.

Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ?

Posted Sep 30, 2007 7:18 UTC (Sun) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (3 responses)

Strangely enough, the article we all comment to points to several conflicting "solutions".

The comment you posted to tries to sort things out. But asking hard questions is not Politically Correct. So you just dismiss his arguments. Or personal motives. Anybody who doesn't agree with you is an enemy who must be shot down?

This has been very unpleasant discussion, and personally led me to think that there's a big bunch of raving feminists I shouldn't even spend my time reading.

Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ?

Posted Sep 30, 2007 9:37 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Well, I've found a good few unpleasant misogynists by reading the same
threads.

The phrase `raving feminist' itself is pretty revealing. There *are* some
people who could be described as `raving feminists' --- reverse sexism,
basically, `men are worthless' and such tripe --- but I've seen none on
this thread, and they're so rare they can generally be discounted.

All the posters to this thread have been saying is that it would be nice
if we didn't drive women away, and let's find out what we're doing to do
that, and by the way being vicious and sexist is unpleasant and let's
stop. In response to this a bunch of people have acted like we're coming
in and spraying them with scary girl cooties OH NOES --- the `dolls and
ponies' comment was particularly disgustingly stereotyped.

If I was female, this thread would probably drive me away on its own.

Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ?

Posted Sep 30, 2007 15:23 UTC (Sun) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (1 responses)

There were some interesting comments. But they were generally lost in the noise.

The problem is that some people are so afraid of hurting any women and thus (oh no!) scaring them away, that they will not let us discuss the facts.

You cannot even mention that a certain prominent female developer started its development life as a man (the name, mind you, was chosen, probably mistakefully, as example in the article) without a bunch of people with good intentions coming to hush you.

There's also a matter of tradeoff that nobody seems to mention: what is the price of those steps?

Suppose that the current "community" has 5% women and 95% men (just making up those number, just like 53.74% of the statistics thrown in in this discussion). Now suppose that your steps manage to double the number of women in the field. But because of the changes they bring, tenth of the men no longer like to contribute.

Do the math: you got a decrese of 5% of the population. Not very successful.

Now of course those are numbers I have made up. And I know that no one wants to chace off men from the field. But you have to be careful with that. Are you?

And I'm not impressed with the "50%" figure: there are two important causes that greatly decrease the proportion of women in free software projects, and will not be addressed simply by being nicer to women:

1. The percepcion of this subject. A matter of education. Face it: there are very few girls in math. Thus even if this is to change, it is a matter of decades.

2. The role of women in the family. This is gradually changing, but slowly. And certainly has an effect on something that requires much devotion of time.

Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ?

Posted Sep 30, 2007 18:00 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Just one point here (I'm too tired to handle the lot but this jumped out
at me): the role of women in the family is surely not relevant in most
Western societies. Across most of Europe the average age of childbirth is
nearing thirty (perhaps even above it) and there are a goodly number of
good free software hackers still in their teens. A large proportion are in
their twenties, far more than the *total* number of female free software
hackers.

So, no, whatever the explanation is, that's not it.

Hmm... Good question.

Posted Sep 30, 2007 10:57 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (6 responses)

What we are advocating for is to be treated with courtesy and respect. Just as any human deserves. Perhaps you think this is unreasonable?

In one word - yes. You propose serious change in a huge system for unknown benefit. Similar changes in other FOSS projects were strongly opposed. For example Linux kernel discriminates against 95% of Earth population (including, ironically enough, Linus himself) - by using non-translatable English messages. Yet all patches designed to fix this problem were rejected so far. The Linux developers feel that "courtesy and respect" to other language natives just "don't worth it".

Here we come to the crunch of the problem: a lot of guys in FOSS don't feel that huge change in the system (rehabilitation and in extreme cases removal of all technically brilliant jerks and misogynists) worth it, but women involved just skip over this very important step. This is not just "women in FOSS" problem, BTW - read about drobbins fate, for example.

That's why I've said "it's important to discuss them", not "it's important to solve them". Because it's not obvious that all requests are "worth it": if the price of making women developers happy is to make 90% of male developers unhappy - then my reaction will be "forget about it". I'm not sure if there are such extreme demands on table, but how can we know if we don't have a discussion ? Certainly "trivial" need "to be treated with courtesy and respect" is not so trivial. Right now "nice are polite" Linus can say anybody who thinks others don't have the "right to choice", and then tries to talk about "freedoms" is a damn hypocritical moron - and it'll not lead to temper tantrum from the person in question.

Guys in FOSS like this atmosphere so all suggestions that they should change it and treat everyone "with courtesy and respect", "avoid sexist jokes" and "objectification of women" in discussion and so on are viewed as direct attack - and rightfully so. I'm not saying such changes are not worth it - far from it, often discussions among FOSS folks are too corrosive and hurt progress even you don't think about women involved, but to say that "it's a no brainer" (like women like to assume) - is oversimplification...

Here we go

Posted Sep 30, 2007 11:22 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (5 responses)

Thanks for admitting it frankly. IMHO all those jerks and misogynists need to either learn courtesy and respect (in other words, grow up) or be left out in the cold. It is an extremely unprofessional conduct, so even if it makes them uncomfortable at first, those people will probably be better off with their newfound skills.

As a side effect, we have learned in these threads that this kind of attitude is also driving lots of people away (women included) who don't feel like dealing with it, or have better things to do with their time.

Here we go

Posted Sep 30, 2007 11:53 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (4 responses)

Quite so. Nobody's suggesting the instition of a Free Software Courtesy
Authority with the power to ban people from mailiing lists. It's simply a
fact of life that social oil (i.e. `not being nasty to people') is
*beneficial*, especially over email where tempers can run high due to
undetected positive feedback loops and misinterpretations.

Would it really be disadvantageous to say `free software development lists
should try not to turn themselves into alt.flame', especially given the
sheer number of projects that implode (often at an early stage) because
the technically brilliant guys who start them simply can't interact with
other human beings without being nasty to them?

(and, again, this social oil is hardly difficult to learn: if I can do it
with autism holding me back, so can you. The Golden Rule is the most
important part: `treat others as you would wish to be treated'. I don't
know anyone who actually likes to be attacked. Maybe you do, I don't
know.)

Here we go

Posted Sep 30, 2007 12:38 UTC (Sun) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

>(and, again, this social oil is hardly difficult to learn: if I can do it
with autism holding me back, so can you. The Golden Rule is the most
important part: `treat others as you would wish to be treated'. I don't
know anyone who actually likes to be attacked. Maybe you do, I don't
know.)

But what if the "guys" are perfectly okay as far as the golden rule is concerned? They're not the ones objecting; it's that new outsider that doesn't understand that this is the way things already work here.

The "golden rule" is a good foundation for social interaction when dealing with individual interactions within an existing group, but like any other generality, it breaks down and indeed even causes problems when you're taking about mixing *groups* of people that may hold different values dear.

Here we go

Posted Sep 30, 2007 13:02 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Perhaps so in the general case, but the specific case of `don't attack
newbies' is, I thought, one that most corners of geekdom held too. Some
poeple in the free software community seem to treat it as `don't attack
newbies unless they've made a tiny error, in which case a charred hide
will be good for them' and judging from some other posts in this
interminable thread some people are treating it as `don't attack newbies
unless they are female'.

Golden rule CREATED this problem

Posted Sep 30, 2007 12:57 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

Nobody likes to be attacked, but FOSS people can (and often prefer) open attack to behind-the-scenes intrigue or polite allegories.

Yes, it's true that some projects were destroyed by lack of tact, but a lot more were created by the people with lack of tact. Brilliant coders who are good in interpersonal communication as well organize startups and sell them for millions of dollars, not create free software, you know...

Golden rule CREATED this problem

Posted Sep 30, 2007 13:39 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

A project which prefers open attack to anything else will tend to drive
away all those developers who don't prefer open attack, sure. That doesn't
mean that open attack is a good thing, especialy not openly attacking
newbies (which is what really drives them away). Behind-the-scenes
intrigue is wrong, as well. `Not being nasty to people' does not imply
`stab people quietly in the back'. The Golden Rule implies that you
shouldn't do that either, unless you personally like being quietly stabbed
in the back, that is. (Few people do!)

I don't understand why you're arguing so hard against fundamental
principles of human discourse here. They're not rocket science. They're so
much not rocket science that they're cliched (`do as you would be done by'
for instance).

Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ?

Posted Sep 30, 2007 11:03 UTC (Sun) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] (22 responses)

> Proof? There is no proof that will satisfy you.

You mean there is no proof that is based on solid facts? OK, got it. Not something unexpected, though.

> The proof is already all around you

Again blah-blah instead of answering the specific questions...

> What we are advocating for is to be treated with courtesy and respect.

How about showing courtesy and respect to the group you're so badly daring to be part of? You know, men like logics and factual information. This is a result of millions years of natural selection. One thing is, sitting near fire in a cave, to think "I can touch this star! I did it!" (never mind it was a lighting beetle) - this kind or perceiving the reality couldn't hurt the carrier of the gene (or even, at much later historical times, did help to successfully mate); on the other hand, thinking "I can run faster than that saber tooth tiger" immediately resulted in purifying the genotype.

Do follow the rules of the game: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html. Just read aloud the section names one by one and think carefully: did you follow them? Just a few examples:

* Be precise and informative about your problem
* Volume is not precision
* Don't claim that you have found a bug
* Describe the problem's symptoms, not your guesses

etc

Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ?

Posted Sep 30, 2007 11:57 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (21 responses)

How about showing courtesy and respect to the group you're so badly daring to be part of? You know, men like logics and factual information.

Non sequitur much? So do women (your just-so story regarding natural selection being as fallacious as most such).

Human beings, of whichever gender, prefer not to be attacked without cause.

I find it notable that basically all the people arguing against common courtesy here are kernel hackers. This reminds me yet again of why I prefer to hack on userspace code (although some userspace development lists are as bad: I avoid them, too).

Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ?

Posted Sep 30, 2007 12:14 UTC (Sun) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] (20 responses)

> Non sequitur much? So do women (your just-so story regarding natural selection being as fallacious as most such).

Perhaps. You couldn't deny though that in the very specific post none of my rather specific questions were answered, could you?

> I find it notable that basically all the people arguing against common courtesy here are kernel hackers.

Honestly, I don't see anyone (let alone majority) is against it per se. What some people find inflaming/amusing/absurd is to focus on this issue from the pure gender perspective. (I'm not a kernel hacker so perhaps see it wrongly ;-)) When in addition any attempt to get pointers to _real_ facts are being answered like "just look around" _this_ begins to sound _really_ impolite.

Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ?

Posted Sep 30, 2007 12:31 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (19 responses)

The only facts I can see in this thread consists of requests from you that
other people should prove a negative. This is of course impossible.

And as for `just look around': can you find *any* other field of human
endeavour with a percentage of female participants as low as free software
development? It's damned rare (perhaps pure maths?), and software
development is not something which appears to be intrinsically male-only:
even if you go in for the `extremes of ability are male' hypothesis, free
software development does not *require* extremes of ability. It's not
*that* hard, and with a global talent pool to draw from we'd expect more
than the well under a hundred female free software developers total that
we see.

Women don't 'choose not to participate' in most fields. It behooves us to
determine why they choose not to participate in this one, and if possible
fix it: not by forcing anyone to participate, not by massive and enforced
changes, but simply because doing things that cause half the human race to
choose to avoid us is a bad way to ensure that we have many eyes to make
bugs shallow and come up with neat ideas. It's obviously a good idea, just
as trying to make small changes that avoid us driving away Indian or
Japanese participants is a good idea.

(And they *do* participate in proprietary software development in larger
numbers. 1/5th of the *programmers* on the thing I work on in my working
hours are female: still not a high percentage but way higher than in free
software.)

Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ?

Posted Sep 30, 2007 13:08 UTC (Sun) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (1 responses)

I can't find any decent statistics right now, but I suspect that you'll find striking similarities to the rate of males/females which have graduated computer sciense with honors.

I also suspect that this applies to some minorities as well.

(At least this was rather true when I graduated almost 10 years ago).

And this is before one extra factor comes into play: "devoting extra time to the family". Like it or not, women are more likely than men to reduce the work load in order to raise the kids. Unless you claim that much of the free software is developed by "students" and thus this factor is not as strong.

(You can like it or not. You can think of ways for changing that. But those are outside the scope of the current discussion)

Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ?

Posted Oct 2, 2007 2:45 UTC (Tue) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

>I can't find any decent statistics right now, but I suspect that you'll find striking similarities to the rate of males/females which have graduated computer sciense with honors.

I don't have statistics on graduation with honors, in particular, either. It's not a well-defined term between institutions, even. So here are some other statistics for the US, from the same report that we discussed a few days ago in the other thread: http://lwn.net/Articles/251569/

Bachelor's awarded, CS: between 28% and 37% female over the last two decades.
Enrolled graduate students, CS: between 20% and 30% female over the last few decades
Master's awarded, CS: between 25% and 34% female over the last few decades
PhD's awarded, CS: between 15% and 19% female over the last few decades.

All of these numbers are wildly larger than the percentage of females in FOSS coding, which is in the 1-2% range.

>And this is before one extra factor comes into play: "devoting extra time to the family".

This is like the 5th "extra factor" you've made up as previous ones have been shot down, but anyway. This one, for a change, is almost certainly real, but I still dispute its significance.

Suppose that the "natural rate" for women in FOSS would be 15%, because that's the smallest of the numbers mentioned above, i.e. we can be pretty sure it's a low estimate. (In fact, having children is a reasonably common reason for women to drop out of PhD programs, so it already includes some of the effect that you are claiming accounts for the difference.)

Suppose that the "actual rate" for women in FOSS is 2%, because that's on the high side of the statistics I've seen. With those assumptions and if I didn't screw up the arithmetic somewhere, that then means that your "extra factor" needs to explain the loss of *87%* of potential female contributors -- probably more in reality.

Here I also don't have statistics (anyone want to chime in?), but I'm pretty sure that far fewer than 87% of techie women even have kids, never mind having a sufficiently disproportionate share of raising them to keep them from being hobby programmers. I base this intuition on my intuition that way fewer than 87% of the male FOSS contributors have kids, and presumably kid-having is equally distributed between the male and female portions of the population.

...so, uh, do you have a 6th try at explaining why it is like totally not the men's fault not even the ones who like to harass women for fun?

Now we are back to square one

Posted Sep 30, 2007 13:17 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (4 responses)

Even if we'll manage to find as many female FOSS developers as there are male ones - it'll only increase "talents pool" two times. Not a big deal.

Lack of female developers is not a problem worth fixing. It's can very well be symptom of something sinister in the FOSS community - that's for sure, but disease worth fixing by itself it's not.

And, BTW, what the big fuss is about: it's free software. You can fork any project you want - and if you'll be successful and your project will have >50% female participants you'll have the power to punish "male jerks" with impurity... Hell - even if just lead developer will be female it'll be enough to establish firm rules...

Why you are concentrating on changing existing, "broken" system ? Free software was not created when RMS convinced proprietary software developers that "software is like sex: it's better when it's free" - it was created when he left MIT and started coding. Why can not "women-friendly" FOSS communities be created this way ???

Starting a women-focused group

Posted Sep 30, 2007 23:19 UTC (Sun) by SelenaDeckelmann (guest, #47907) [Link] (3 responses)

At the risk of opening up a thread that was winding down...

I am the author of the Women in Technology article quoted at the top of the page.

Free software was not created when RMS convinced proprietary software developers that "software is like sex: it's better when it's free" - it was created when he left MIT and started coding. Why can not "women-friendly" FOSS communities be created this way ???

While much of this discussion has ranged outside of what I set out to talk about, I wanted to mention that I am part of a group of people (men and women) who started a software users group whose goal is to get more women involved in F/LOSS. This is a group specifically about programming. We meet in-person, in Portland, OR.

We are in our infancy, but are fortunate enough to have experienced programmers, and enthusiastic volunteers driving the effort. Over the next few months, I hope to have more to report.

Those of you here who have not read my article, I am very interested in what you think about the specific points I made in it. (here it is)

My perspective, in a nutshell, is that I have had an exceptionally positive experience both as a user and a developer of open source software. My goal in writing the article was simply to encourage more women to join us and share in that fantastic experience and community. I see F/LOSS as an important social movement, not just about the code.

It is self-evident that we cannot have F/LOSS without code. But we also cannot have code without people. I think that we all benefit from actively inviting into our communities people who are different from us - different genders, different ethnicities, different cultures or political beliefs. The discussion that occurred here is remarkable because of the willingness of people of polar-opposite opinion to (mostly) rationally discuss a very difficult problem. If there is one advantage the open source community has relative to the rest of the world, it is an abundance of people willing to listen to other points of view and be persuaded.

And with that, thanks for listening. Feel free to contact me directly. I am fairly easily found through google at this point.

Starting a women-focused group

Posted Oct 1, 2007 0:39 UTC (Mon) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] (1 responses)

> While much of this discussion has ranged outside of what I set out to talk about

Indeed.

> I am part of a group of people (men and women) who started a software users group whose goal is to get more women involved in F/LOSS. This is a group specifically about programming.

I wish you good luck (though somewhat skeptical about groups formed to follow more than one agenda, and mostly orthogonal ones at that).

> Those of you here who have not read my article, I am very interested in what you think about the specific points I made in it.

OK, I did re-read it, and I guess the only point which I disagree with is ...

> I think that we all benefit from actively inviting into our communities

... that word "actively". Perhaps we mean it differently, but to me, it associates with "forcibly". I hate it when _I_ am "actively" being involved into something, so expect others might find it rather unpleasant, too. I believe the internal barriers (== discrimination, doesn't matter against women or any other subset of the mankind), in cases when they exist, should, if possible, be dealt with instead.

PS. Oh, and the title. Perhaps you believed that "To Sir, with Love" would ring the bell and make the connotation obvious. It didn't for me - not until I googled for it (and that happened only after I had read the article, confused by an apparent lack of connection between the title and the body).

What I mean by active

Posted Oct 1, 2007 1:21 UTC (Mon) by SelenaDeckelmann (guest, #47907) [Link]

Thanks for having another look.

... that word "actively". Perhaps we mean it differently, but to me, it associates with "forcibly". I hate it when _I_ am "actively" being involved into something, so expect others might find it rather unpleasant, too. I believe the internal barriers (== discrimination, doesn't matter against women or any other subset of the mankind), in cases when they exist, should, if possible, be dealt with instead.

Fair enough. I meant active as the opposite of passive. Speaking for myself, I did not think anyone would want to hear my opinions on technical subjects in a user group - until a friend asked me to speak up. My point in the article was that asking someone directly for their opinion, or letting them know that their participation is wanted, can encourage a person to participate. That's very different from forcing people.

Honestly, I don't think that it would be possible to force women into IT. It is certainly possible to invite them. I've "recruited" a few women from other disciplines to get CS degrees myself.

PS. Oh, and the title. Perhaps you believed that "To Sir, with Love" would ring the bell and make the connotation obvious. It didn't for me - not until I googled for it (and that happened only after I had read the article, confused by an apparent lack of connection between the title and the body).

I'll try to pick a better title next time :)

Good luck

Posted Oct 1, 2007 5:16 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Wish you success - if you'll succeed it'll be sample which can be pointed out as "you don't need to tolerate jerks and misogynists to achieve success". Just don't forget that for most men "creation of place where both women and men can participate equally and where women do not feel ostracized" is not a success by itself (you successfully created yet another way to waste time? congratulations! we sooo don't need this). Something used by all major distributions or something touted as "major new feature" in one of them - this will be a success...

P.S. May be "just" 200% increase in number of Linux desktops in area can be considered success (but here I'm not sure: since it does not have global impact it's easy to say that such increase was a reason why your group survived, not a consequence of it's existence).

Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ?

Posted Sep 30, 2007 13:30 UTC (Sun) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] (4 responses)

> The only facts I can see in this thread consists of requests from you that other people should prove a negative. This is of course impossible.

What is impossible? E.g. LKML archives are there for everyone to look & search. Show me examples of female participants being treated rude based solely on the gender issue. Have problem, eh? On the other hand, the flame level against males there is very high ;-)

> It behooves us to determine why they choose not to participate in this one, and if possible fix it:

Good. And what does one get trying to pinpoint the possible causes? An extremely helpful anything between "look around yourself" and "you are the problem". If anything, this could only worsen the deal.

> And they *do* participate in proprietary software development in larger numbers.

And certainly you couldn't imagine there are other factors beyond the sucked-out-of-the-thin-air *isms... Like "participation in proprietary software development" provides immediate revenue in the form of cash - which perhaps helps tolerating assumed abuses. Just one of the zillion of possible explanations.

Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ?

Posted Sep 30, 2007 14:12 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

The problem I see is newbies being treated unnecessarily nastily. This
drives all sorts of people away: it is plausible that it preferentially
drives away women (also Japanese and others from cultures where formality
is prized).

I don't see much sign of women being treated nastily *because* they are
women, but that may in part be because there are so few around, so you
rarely see them treated in any way at all: but then we've already had some
pop up on this very thread saying that they were treated nastily (although
as far as I know not on free software mailing lists).

I've seen several projects nearly die because their maintainers drove
everyone away. In some cases the project failed: in some it limps on with
one or two maintainers: in some the project forked. In a sense this is
Darwinian and self-correcting, but notice that the criterion here wasn't
anything technical: it was social... and some of those projects *did* die
(I'd have to dig a bit to fish out their names, though).

Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ?

Posted Oct 1, 2007 12:59 UTC (Mon) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (2 responses)

Where are Women/Japanese/newbies being treated harshly? On LKML? that is a technical mailing list, so newbies should indeed do their homework before posting there. And if they don't , they will be flamed for wasting the time of everybody.

If they don't know how to post, they should go to #kernelnewbies instead. That's why it's there.

I try to be nice to beginners. But as you are probably well aware, some of them simply don't read basic documentation or do basic search (Even after being told to. Nicely). Sometimes being harsh is the only way to get the message through. Sometimes even this won't help, and you have to ignore requests for help, or (im)politly answer that you won't answer. And it is not always easy to tell if someone who is asking a question has made an honest effort first.

If I would spend 30 minutes double- and triple-checking before answering to newbies, newbies simply won't get answers and will get frustrated. And answering their questions won't be fun enough for me, so I won't do that.

It's not matter of doing the homework

Posted Oct 1, 2007 14:47 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

It's clash of cultures. Japanese (and to the lesser degree a women) expect to get all criticism in private - never in public. That's just how they were raised. But you can do tons of homework yet still get flames on LKML (it's kind of hard to do everything perfectly from the first try no matter how much homework you've did). Often it's enough to "close the story": they'll go away and will try to invent closed source API to avoid this public embarrassment (among other factors). Of course hackers culture (very much alive on LKML) says the direct opposite: everything should be discussed and all mistakes should pointed out with brutal honest in public.

You can say that it's Ok to ignore quirks of women and Japanese (and thus drive them away) - it's your right, but don't try to say that they are wrong, not you. Actually the sad truth is that there are noone who's clearly wrong - it's clash of cultures and representatives of both honestly believe they are in the right...

It's not matter of doing the homework

Posted Oct 2, 2007 20:42 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Excellently put. (It goes to show, even if someone *is* intrinsically evil
because they disagree with me, they can still be right. ;} )

Proprietary developers are in different position

Posted Sep 30, 2007 14:33 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (5 responses)

Don't know about your employer but in my case I was forced to study "code of conduct" rules and signed paper which signifies that I've read and accepted them - and I can be fired if I'll violate them. There was sizable chunk about "how not to offend female co-workers". I've not seen anything too restrictive from my viewpoint (I do not use soft porno pictures in my presentations, for example), but I can easily imagine guys who'll hate these rules, but will accept them: employer is employer, who pays sets the rules. But now these same rules are pushed in FOSS world - and I see why it does not fly: "LinuxChix is not my employer and not my mom, why should it set the rules for me ?"

When you can give better answer to this question than "we deserve to be treated with courtesy and respect just as any human being" - you'll be ready to set the rules. Because right now most "jerks" are offering you the same amount of "courtesy and respect" they offer "just as any human being": none. Their peers are accepting it, why can not you ?

P.S. It all looks like a story with topless bar: when feminist organizations started to complain male waiters were also deprived of the top... Here we have something similar: the same principles applied to male and female work differently so it's hard to achieve discrimination-less position...

Proprietary developers are in different position

Posted Sep 30, 2007 15:12 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

Your employer is a lot more... excessive about it than I am. (Perhaps one
advantage of working in the UK is that employers assume common courtesy
rather than slamming down what is by the sounds of it a ridiculously
overdone spiked iron fist and mandating it?)

I find it interesting that you consider that treating other human beings
with courtesy and respect is *optional*. I suppose it is, if you don't
mind driving most people away and having them call you nasty things when
you're not there. It's a `should do' on the same level as `remember to
shower regularly': if you don't do it, most people will dislike you. (But
perhaps you don't care about having everyone else dislike you and stay
away from you.)

Your comparison of software development to working in topless bars doesn't
even deserve a response. If you seriously think that the two occupations
are comparable, you're beyond help.

(It's amusing to me that I, a diagnosed autistic who had to *learn* this
stuff over several decades and am still very bad at it, am now having to
explain it to other people. I'm normally the one who makes social faux pas
and has to apologise for them: but perhaps the difference is that I care
if I'm doing so, and try to avoid it. Your words strongly imply that you
think that if you piss off other people through being unnecessarily nasty
to them, it is in some way *their* fault. I hope that attitude doesn't
land you in court or jail someday, is all...)

Anyway, I've had it with this thread.

Finally! Breaktrough...

Posted Sep 30, 2007 17:31 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

My employer is US company. They need this paper for accidents. The "no discrimination" hysteria in US is such that company can be sued if it can not prove that it did everything it could to avoid "unjust discrimination". So if they got the paper and someone called female worker "bitch" and than said "bitch" sued the company - it can show that it's employer's fault: he signed papers so was warned.

As for courtesy and respect - yes, that's the problem. Respect is not a right. It must be earned. And optionality of needless courtesy is often considered a feature among FOSS developers.

And the topless bar story just shows that the same rules when applied in the exact same way to male and female can be acceptable for male and offensive for female. If the situation in FOSS is not like that then my comparison is wrong, of course, but then the question arises: what's the hoopla is all about if rules happily accepted by males are driving females away ?

Proprietary developers are in different position

Posted Sep 30, 2007 22:32 UTC (Sun) by mepr (guest, #4819) [Link] (2 responses)

The person who said something along the lines of "I can't think of examples of females being treated badly for being females, but maybe it's just because they are so few" is on to something.
The people who said that women are socialized out of programming were also largely correct, I think.
There is a woman who became a member of the LUG in my town. Her story is interesting. She never learned to play chess because nobody ever suggested to her that it was a good idea. She never learned to program for the same reason. At the same time, her brother was encouraged in these same things, and went on to be a programmer.
In her early twenties, she tries chess and finds out that she's good at it. Then she tried programming and found out that she's good at that. Within a couple of years she was a Debian developer, and currently maintains a fairly well known Debian package.
Unfortunately, she quit going to lug meetings, because despite repeated, direct comments on the subject by her and others, there were a few of the males in the group that insisted on making highly unwelcome, highly sexualized and demeaning remarks.
What is so difficult to understand that there are very few people willing to put up with such things for very long? I have long held the theory that women avoid working in IT because they would rather work in one of the many fields where they will be treated with a modicum of respect and not live through incessant pissing contests at work.

And that is small model of the story of "women in FOSS", right ?

Posted Sep 30, 2007 23:11 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

She quit going to lug meetings, because despite repeated, direct comments on the subject by her and others, there were a few of the males in the group that insisted on making highly unwelcome, highly sexualized and demeaning remarks.

Yup. And when time come to choose between "one intelligent woman" and "few male jerks" majority choose "few male jerks", right ? If behavior of people does not change and it's not acceptable - they must be removed from the group. That is the question which should be discussed first: are members of community (LUG, LKML, gentoo-dev, etc) ready to kick out few male members to make women fell comfortable and who exactly can be kicked and who will not be kicked - no matter what. Then you can decide if you want to try to "make women feel welcome". It's tough question - but without answering it you'll only get flames and steam...

And that is small model of the story of "women in FOSS", right ?

Posted Oct 1, 2007 21:09 UTC (Mon) by mepr (guest, #4819) [Link]

Yup. And when time come to choose between "one intelligent woman" and "few male jerks" majority choose "few male jerks", right ? If behavior of people does not change and it's not acceptable - they must be removed from the group. You're right, that's essentially what happened.

Given the dynamics of the group, it would be quite difficult to kick out a person for such a thing. The local LUG is largely run as a very informal, loose association. It was difficult in the particular (non-isolated) incident I am thinking of, because one of the people involved was well liked by most of the group, even though most people there were not happy about it.

However, I am glad to say that the kind of behavior we are talking about is not tolerated on the LUG's mailing list. The rare unacceptable comment generally receives a very strong response and we have never had to kick someone off of the list.

BTW, I hope that my comments (and the summation of this thread) don't make it seem that people who care about F/OSS software are bad people. In fact, a great deal of the reason why I have been involved has been the idealistic community spirit shared by many of us, and the unusually high density of principled people and deep thinkers.

In fact, I usually find that people who love F/OSS software are usually wonderful people that have wonderful significant others. Also, I think the majority of us recognized that we are diminished by having too few women around.

However, I wonder if a culture that is perennially stocked with immature males will take a long time to grow up.

Also BTW, WRT groups that promote the involvement of females in F/OSS, they are performing a needed service. It is just the way of things that people need role models and mentorship, and it is also the usual way of things that people need a mentor that is like them. Isn't the wizard/apprentice one of the oldest stories in hackerdom? If it is more likely for that bond to form between people of the same gender, then such groups provide a place to go for women that look in their immediate environment and don't find a same-gender role model.

Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ?

Posted Oct 2, 2007 3:50 UTC (Tue) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

And as for `just look around': can you find *any* other field of human endeavour with a percentage of female participants as low as free software development? It's damned rare (perhaps pure maths?)

Pure maths -- no way. In the US as of 2001, women get >27% of math PhD's, hold >17% of math postdocs, and >16% of tenured faculty positions in "mathematical sciences". None of these are quite pure pure maths, but. (Source: nsf04317).

In the US there are a higher percentage of female *construction workers* than FOSS contributors -- 2.5%, which is slightly higher than the *highest* count I've ever seen for FOSS. (Source: figure 19c on this page of "eLCOSH"; note that unlike 19a and 19b, 19c is specifically excluding managers, secretaries, etc. -- these are the people actually out doing the work.)

Apparently we are at least doing better than, umm... welders. If we look only at welders, than we're doing great. Makes you feel better, don't it? :-/

Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ?

Posted Sep 30, 2007 13:15 UTC (Sun) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link]

Anecdotal evidence really isn't proof, and not necessarily a strong argument. I'm sure that the things you describe have happened, but things like death threats are simply not common behaviours, and do not show that we have a general problem any more than the occurrence of murders in society as a whole shows that we're living in an anarchic warzone.

Indeed, even more mild forms of apparent sexist behaviour aren't necessarily real sexism - there are trolls everywhere and they will use any line of attack they think will annoy people; in your case that would be sexist remarks, in my case it would be something else. You would think you were being discriminated against unfairly, when you may actually be being trolled in an entirely equal opportunities manner.

Lastly, there /is/ an implied threat in what you're saying. This is a functioning community, and one in which many people who find themselves excluded from wider society find a comfortable home. You are suggesting that this community should be made more like that wider society, that it should behave 'professionally' etc. People fear (not unreasonably) that if the changes you desire are made they will lose their comfortable community, and attacking people as being liars, delusional, and using 'bogus arguments' does nothing to assuage those fears.

My attempt

Posted Sep 30, 2007 15:00 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (16 responses)

OK, since you insist on getting answers, here is my take, all of it IMHO. Just spelling the obvious for evgeny; sorry if it is boring for the rest.

Again these email threats... As has been noted by others, very much like McBride's.

We had a legitimate reason to believe that McBride's threats were just a publicity stunt. We don't have a similar motivation for sexual harassment, do we? If you think that e.g. Val Henson has anything to win, the burden of proof is on you.

There were statements that men and women are different, including IQ distributions. So what? Either these are false - prove it

They are patently false, since IQ tests are designed so that both genders average at 100. Yes, they have to be revised from time to time, as education in the general population grows.

Now may I ask you - what kind of post it was that caused such a response - was it a techie one or you tried to promote something feminist?

Let me speculate: both techie posts and feminist posts. Add 1 for "techie feminist" posts (as in "women in IT"). If LWN elicits this kind of responses, I don't want to imagine what Slashdot can do with it.

By the time (and IF) there is a 50/50 gender balance in the field, either a) the ads will feature both genders equally as well or b) will disappear if a majority find them offensive (so they actually drive potential buyers off).

I get it. So, in the meantime women have to bow to their male overlords and accept our sexist ads.

Why a movement, by the sole virtue of becoming more popular, should become more attractive to women than to men?

It doesn't have to, but a tendency towards equality is generally regarded as "healthy". After all, women in IT are quite common today, and they even do their jobs. While women in Free software are still very scarce.

Let's not call something "a problem" before it's proven as such.

You should ask any female in the field then.

It's only a problem ONLY IF caused by a direct discrimination. So let's talk about cases of discrimination - and we all must do our best to fix these.

I have seen plenty of cases of discrimination in this thread alone. The will to overcome it has been null so far.

Why the hell you're considering the status-quo as a result of a gift from the $DEITY that was seized by those rude males?

AFAICT, many people here are simply questioning the status quo. Others are just defending it with bogus arguments.

Who is preventing a motivated group of women from forming a female-only mailing list/forum/what not and come up after a while with a rival OS or killer app?

The "problem" that you discounted above.

Don't talk about inequalities, show the equality!

We can't since there is a so called "problem". Sorry if it is getting circular at this point.

BTW, do you consider yourself a member of FOSS? Then you've got that myopia disease, too.

Gotcha, that one really hurt! So mature!

Seriously, though. The problem is that a subset of males feel it is their right to be impolite and don't feel the need to be respectful to their less experienced peers, especially when they make mistakes or belong to "the female persuasion".

This immature and unprofessional attitude is luckily not as widespread as our little conversation here on LWN would suggest; on certain dev lists (e.g. Cinelerra's CinCVS) women are welcome and make valuable contributions. The situation can therefore improve with some effort.

My attempt

Posted Sep 30, 2007 16:20 UTC (Sun) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] (4 responses)

> We had a legitimate reason to believe that McBride's threats were just a publicity stunt.

No, why? I honestly believe he got a few (perhaps more than a few). I mentioned these as something that should simply be ignored (or treated properly if believed real).

> We don't have a similar motivation for sexual harassment, do we?

?? Who are these "we"?

> If you think that e.g. Val Henson has anything to win, the burden of proof is on you.

And what is exactly about Val? Her articles here at LWN are very well welcomed. Mind to provide a pointer to an offensive post?

> They are patently false, since IQ tests are designed so that both genders average at 100.

So to make at least the average look politically correct? But how can a translation operation alter the _scale_? What about other genetic and hormone differences?

> Let me speculate

No, enough.

> So, in the meantime women have to bow to their male overlords and accept our sexist ads.

Don't look at the ads; ignore them; write to the editor; cancel subscription. I personally choose to ignore - most are tasteless anyway, being they what you call "sexist" or not. BTW, how these ads are specific to our community? They are neither created by us nor, AFAIKT, are different than ads of e.g. coffee or washing machines - and these are basically used/bought by men and women alike.

> a tendency towards equality is generally regarded as "healthy"

Nope. "Healthy" is when any kind of discrimination is absent. Whether it results in equality or not (what is "equality"? 50/50?) is completely irrelevant.

> You should ask any female in the field then.

Like http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/x106.ht... ?

"2.9. Reasons women avoid Linux specifically:

Linux development is more competitive and fierce than most areas of programming. Often, the only reward (or the major reward) for writing code is status and the approval of your peers. Far more often, the "reward" is a scathing flame, or worse yet, no response at all. Since women are socialized to not be competitive and avoid conflict, and since they have low self-confidence to begin with, Linux and open source in general are even more difficult than most areas of computing for women to get and stay involved in."

Which is basically what has been said in this thread earlier (by those labeled by all kinds of *ists). Please notice especially the sentence that starts with "Since women...". The rest of the list doesn't look any specific to FLOSS.

My last attempt

Posted Sep 30, 2007 21:08 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (3 responses)

And what is exactly about Val?

Quoting from her homepage:

Just think, if I ever get to be the first female keynote speaker at a top Linux conference, then I get to look forward to death and rape threats! Awesome! Why do I bother, again?

She is actually reporting from a blog post which is lost, unfortunately. You have plenty other testimonies to make up for it, some of them on this same page.

So to make at least the average look politically correct?

No, by definition. IQ tests are done this way. Men and women are assumed to be equally intelligent. It's an axiom. If you don't agree, you can create your own test and publish it.

But how can a translation operation alter the _scale_?

Easy. An IQ test is composed of many individual tests, and many of them are gender-biased. Let's say there are only two tests: S (spatial, where men fare better) and V (verbal, where women are more proficient, always on average). The final score is

IQ = a*score(S)+b*score(V)

so manipulating the coefficients 'a' and 'b' you can make both genders perform about the same, on average.

An even more difficult problem is to make it look like a normal distribution, and yet they do it. Yes, the Bell curve is there by design.

What about other genetic and hormone differences?

As many people have repeatedly pointed out: irrelevant. All the IQ factors are chosen to equate men and women (or, as psychologists say it, to "remove the gender bias", go figure).

BTW, how these ads are specific to our community?

The word "blatant" comes to mind.

"Healthy" is when any kind of discrimination is absent. Whether it results in equality or not (what is "equality"? 50/50?) is completely irrelevant.

Fine. As you don't agree that there is any discrimination, you can rest now: Free software is "healthy". Never mind that half the population are either absent or actually complaining about inequalities.

[quote from the HOWTO] Which is basically what has been said in this thread earlier (by those labeled by all kinds of *ists).

Not at all: those people have said that women may be less intelligent in account of their smaller brains (MisterIO), that jerks and misogynists can rule Free software as long as they are technically brillian (khim), that open attack is better than polite allegories (khim again), that maybe women are biologically less interested in the sorts of problems and tasks that IT requires of them (elanthis), that acrobatic intelligence would be very rare for a woman (alankila), that you shouldn't expect feminists to use any formal studies to prove their vague points (evgeny), and the like. Never once did you admit that there may be something wrong with the social structures we have built, since they are so hostile to huge sectors of the population (like half of it to begin with). And that is what the HOWTO literally says.

To me it reads between the lines rather like: "most women have to put up with enough crap already in their daily jobs, so they have better things to do in their spare time than stand a bunch of macho jerks". Quite sensible IMHO. Unluckily we are competitive men and tend to persevere in these inane threads. Enough for me already.

My last attempt

Posted Sep 30, 2007 22:13 UTC (Sun) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link]

> Men and women are assumed to be equally intelligent. It's an axiom.

How divinely simple...

Small correction

Posted Oct 1, 2007 0:09 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

I can not understand if you see the difference, so I'll clarify. I never said "jerks and misogynists" should "rule Free software as long as they are technically brilliant". I just pointed out that it's currently the case: a lot of core developers in a lot of projects are jerks - and proud of it. Not sure about number of misogynists - but there are probably sizable number as well. And they designed the system which suits them. Said system is hostile to probably 90% of population (not just women). This is by design. Is it fair system ? Surprisingly enough the answer is "yes": it's not designed to be pleasing for everyone, but it is designed in such a way as to give everyone chance "to fit". If they want to. The catch is that some rules are hard to swallow for some men and most of women. They are even written - were written for years: Some people assert that many hackers have a mild form of autism or Asperger's Syndrome, and are actually missing some of the brain circuitry that lubricates normal human social interaction. This may or may not be true. If you are not a hacker yourself, it may help you cope with our eccentricities if you think of us as being brain-damaged. Go right ahead. We won't care; we like being whatever it is we are, and generally have a healthy skepticism about clinical labels.

Now the questions is: should this system be changed or not ? If the system will be changed some of participants will become unhappy but it'll probably bring some new developers (some of them female). Before such major change is contemplated the current members must decide that they want such a change (where there are clear leaders they can decide that it's worthwhile goal). Even if it'll drive few valuable contributors away. Change should be driven by insiders, not imposed by unsatisfied outsiders (female or not). "Valuable suggestions" by analytics firms are met with hostility - and linuxchix is version of such an analytics firm from the insiders POV. As long as existing members are happy with the outcome "jerks and misogynists can rule the projects", if most members will decide that it's time to change "jerks and misogynists" will be left in dust. The fork option is always open - and if most developers agree that "time of jerks and misogynists" is gone original project will go the way or XFree86 or Sodipodi...

Basically my point is: "small cosmetic changes" women are asking for are not "small" and are not "cosmetic" at all. This is request for MAJOR REVOLUTION - and should be regarded as such. May be we need this revolution, may be not - I do not know, it's complex question, but to try to say that it's just a question of "few jerks and misogynists" is to oversimplify the problem.

Small correction

Posted Oct 1, 2007 21:43 UTC (Mon) by rickmoen (subscriber, #6943) [Link]

Although the quoted paragraph was Eric's rather than mine, I just wanted to put in a small, gentle word as co-author of the essay "How to Ask Questions the Smart Way" that you cited.

Our essay actually did not address misogyny. (Alas, it appears that various forms of that problem are rather more common than I'd hoped.) The passage you quoted is part of where Eric and I attempted to account for a tendency towards extreme bluntness on technical forums that comes across as tactlessness at best, that is part of a pattern of ruthless S/N filtering that people on technical forums who wish to remain productive typically feel obliged to implement.

But that should not equate to misogyny, and I feel pretty confident in saying that neither Eric nor I wished to excuse in any way the hostile and abusive reception that I often see extended to women in technical contexts, especially, to my dismay, those dealing with Linux and open source.

And I might or might not agree with the need to implement particular practical corrective suggestions made by members of Linuxchix (and others), but I'd certainly strongly recommend listening to them very carefully, and in a fair, patient, and receptive frame of mind, because I think you'll (plural "you will") find that they have a strong general tendency to make sense.

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmaifa.com

My attempt

Posted Oct 1, 2007 10:09 UTC (Mon) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (9 responses)

I have to quibble this part here:

>> There were statements that men and women are different, including IQ
>> distributions. So what? Either these are false - prove it

> They are patently false, since IQ tests are designed so that both genders
> average at 100. Yes, they have to be revised

Note that even if the average is the same by design, the shape of the curve may still be quite different. There is some literature showing that this is the case and it's even been used to support the notion that this is why men are more likely to be high achievers: the percentage of population above a certain IQ point is significantly larger. For the average to work out to the same, it's then balanced by greater number of low-IQ men.

Trying to quit

Posted Oct 1, 2007 18:36 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (8 responses)

I don't want to engage in full-scale warfare again, just a small skirmish: you still don't get it. The shape of the curve is there by design too, including the dispersion, just as much as the average.

IQ tries to measure the unknown quantity g, which represents "intelligence" and is hard to even define. It does so by creating an absolutely artificial measure, which includes gender equality in the definition. (Which some people here don't seem to like.) If the dispersion is different for men and for women, that is an artifact of the measure, not a fundamental truth about the unknown g. It is as insightful as saying that it is twice as hot when the temperature in Celsius degrees doubles, from 20°C to 40°C (or 50°F to 100°F, if you prefer).

In short, IQ is utterly useless for, among other things, finding differences between men and women, apart from the obvious: spatial vs verbal aptitudes. forthy makes an interesting comparison below to CPU profiles. (Note the irony: if it was the opposite and women were better at spatial reasoning, a few posters would probably have jumped at the fact to suggest that women are worse at programming since they lack the verbal skills to use our very masculine programming languages. As it is, they are left wondering what on Earth does better spatial reasoning have to do with IT skills.)

Trying to quit

Posted Oct 1, 2007 20:27 UTC (Mon) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] (5 responses)

Perhaps we refer to different definitions of IQ. What I mean is: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_intelligence>. E.g., see the second figure and the explanation for it.

Wikipedia at its worst

Posted Oct 1, 2007 20:44 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (4 responses)

You mean Normal_distribution_pdf.png, about which the article says: "The diagram shows only general concepts of how curves might compare. It does not represent specific experimental data". Come on, you are bordering the obtuse.

Please read this very informative article by the American Psychological Association, linked from there. It may clarify the situation for you. Then again, it may not.

Wikipedia at its worst

Posted Oct 1, 2007 21:46 UTC (Mon) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] (3 responses)

> You mean Normal_distribution_pdf.png

I mean there are scientists who are perfectly happy NOT to use gender-averaged definition of IQ as your previous post explicitly said. This figure TOGETHER with the text RIGHT to it confirms it.

> It does not represent specific experimental data". Come on, you are bordering the obtuse.

If you're interested in the specific experimental data, follow the links to refs below. E.g., let me quote the abstract of Ref. [15]:

"Sex differences in mathematical reasoning ability: more facts"
CP Benbow and JC Stanley, Science 222 (1983): 1029-1031.

Almost 40,000 selected seventh-grade students from the Middle Atlantic region of the United States took the College Board Scholastic Aptitude Test as part of the Johns Hopkins regional talent search in 1980, 1981, and 1982. A separate nationwide talent search was conducted in which any student under age 13 who was willing to take the test was eligible. The results obtained by both procedures establish that by age 13 a large sex difference in mathematical reasoning ability exists and that it is especially pronounced at the high end of the distribution: among students who scored greater than or equal to 700, boys outnumbered girls 13 to 1. Some hypothesized explanations of such differences were not supported by the data.

-----

Now you can go to the library and read the full article. Alternatively, call this sexism and be PC-happy.

Careful with your terminology

Posted Oct 2, 2007 6:20 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (2 responses)

You will notice that the referenced article is not about "IQ", but about mathematical reasoning. When using these culturally loaded terms in a scientific frame so that we can distinguish between prejudices and legitimate differences, rigor is crucial.

Careful with your terminology

Posted Oct 2, 2007 11:56 UTC (Tue) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] (1 responses)

> When using these culturally loaded terms in a scientific frame so that we can distinguish between prejudices and legitimate differences, rigor is crucial.

I did suggest we might use different definitions - to which you extremely politely replied "you are bordering the obtuse."

With linguistic issues aside, do you accept that (i) certain intellectual abilities (in this specific case, abstract math) might differ significantly between the representatives of the two genders and (ii) these abilities might be crucial for a success in certain FLOSS projects? You know, at least as _hypotheses_ that may merit civilized discussion instead of shouting "liars" and all kinds of "*ists".

These 13-year boys and girls are now around 37 - more or less the average age of e.g. LKML, if multiple photos from all kinds of kernel summits are indicative.

Now, one can go to great length discussing whether these differences are at the genetic level or somehow socialized (those dolls... I wonder why no parent sued the manufacturers of these toys resulting in dumbing down their daughters - and that in the US, known for successful multi-million absurd cases!). There are _scientific_ works on these subjects as well. But these are extremely off-topic. Not to mention that an absolute majority, if not 100% of us are not specialists in the field.

Whatever the actual causes of the disproportions are, any attempt to "actively" bring in an abstract "equality" are doomed. The best we can do (and I believe most of us are doing it anyway) is to fight against any sign of _direct_ discrimination and try hard to avoid prejudicing.

Let us operate with _facts_, clearly label _assumptions_ and _personal_ experiences as such, and be tolerant to opinions which break taboos (even when you honestly believe this is an axiom and not a taboo).

Careful with your terminology

Posted Oct 2, 2007 17:21 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

I did suggest we might use different definitions - to which you extremely politely replied "you are bordering the obtuse."

You did suggest your own alternate definition for the same term, "IQ", which has a perfectly defined meaning already. I only replied the quoted sentence when you tried to use as explanation of your alternate definitions a wikipedia graph about normals which you can find in the corresponding article. Sorry if I'm being pedantic, but as I explained it is especially important to use the right terms in this area.

I accept your suggestions (males are more profficient at some abilities than females, and those may be crucial for certain FOSS projects), but I don't think they are very likely -- or relevant. As to the rest, all you say is perfectly reasonable and I think we mostly agree.

Trying to quit

Posted Oct 2, 2007 17:50 UTC (Tue) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (1 responses)

> ... an absolutely artificial measure, which includes gender equality in
> the definition. If the dispersion is different for men and for women,
> that is an artifact of the measure, not a fundamental truth about the
> unknown g.

This looks like a contradiction to me. If measurements are corrected to produce identical result ("gender equality in the definition"), then how could the dispersion end up being different? And why wouldn't some approximation of the "fundamental truth" about g not be found in the gender bias function used to correct the results for equality?

No contradiction

Posted Oct 2, 2007 21:18 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

IQ tests must be corrected from time to time, or the results tend to drift. For starters, among civilized populations IQ grows about 3 IQ points per decade. Since the average for a large population must be 100, by definition, the test results must be adjusted.

I'm no expert, but I can imagine that variations in dispersion between genders are possible too. Giving more weight to tests with bigger variance on one side and smaller in the other, and recalibrating to keep the same average, would eliminate the gender bias. Or maybe it is a statistical artifact from an imperfect fit to a normal. Remember, the normal distribution in IQ scores is there by design; nobody really knows if intelligence itself (whatever it is) follows a normal distribution or not.

And why wouldn't some approximation of the "fundamental truth" about g not be found in the gender bias function used to correct the results for equality?

Because g is not an intelligence profile; it is a scalar factor. Again from APA:

Some theorists (e.g., Spearman, 1927) have emphasized the importance of a general factor, g, which represents what all the tests have in common

This factor, in other words, represents "intelligence" itself, not ability at specific tasks. It is the thing that makes people solve problems better than chimpanzees or gorillas. It is what makes disabled children unable to learn beyond a certain point (as opposed to those with behavioral issues). Even its existence and utility is also a contended issue; read the article for a good introduction.

My attempt

Posted Oct 1, 2007 16:57 UTC (Mon) by forthy (guest, #1525) [Link]

They are patently false, since IQ tests are designed so that both genders average at 100.

That's only the bottom line. These tests don't try hard to make women score good on 3D recognition, and they don't try hard to make men score good on wording stuff. They actually use a mix of all these different skills to drive the overall score to 100 for an average person (gender independent). So while the test makers acknowledge that there are different "performance profiles" between males and females, they also produce a gender-neutral result. If you like to, you could probably also go on spec.org and create a CPU-neutral benchmark (e.g. neutral between Athlon and Core 2), by deliberately changing the weight of the particular benchmarks (there are enough of those that you can probably solve the equation for quite a number of CPUs to be "equal"). It now no longer tells you which CPU is "faster", but it still will tell you which is faster on 189.lucas (or whatever particular benchmark you choose). Still note that a different "performance profile" of the average male/female doesn't mean that a particular woman is bad at math or a particular man has problems with words. It's just statistics, it just tells you "how many".

And remember, it doesn't have to be an actual "hard" skill. FOSS development is not just about being able to do it, but also about being motivated to do it. You don't get money, it doesn't boost your career, at least not instantly. A lot of capable male software developers will refuse to do FOSS just for this reason. And since FOSS development is not "cubicle based", it also means that you won't meet you peers in person very often. You discuss with them on mailing lists, with a lot of heat on them. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. That's the attitude. It can drive away quite a number of people, not just women. A number of high-profile people are famous for being difficult to work with (RMS, Theo de Raadt, recently I've the impression, Linus Torvalds wants to join the list). Maybe being a jerk is a particular required skill for some kind of work in FOSS. Especially when you want to pave a road that's full of thorn bushes (like RMS did). If it's so, we can't get rid of it and we know why so few females participate: There are just so few female jerks (just kidding. Being a jerk is unfortunately not limited to one particular gender ;-).

All this together can make a huge difference in numbers. Some of them can be changed, some of them can't. E.g. if we found out that capable women rarely seek endeavors for themselves (that's how most of the men ended up in FOSS), we might need to build up a mentoring system to get women to participate. If women can't stand the heat of a mailing list discussion or IRC, we need some other communication mean. Maybe women developers prefer talking to each other on the phone? I don't know, many male developers prefer telephone conferences as well, but few of them end up in FOSS development. So some of these changes could expand the community in other directions as well.

What is probably a wrong approach is an accusing tone. If some outsider comes in and without having any other merits, tells me "you scare me off because of <insult>," would I follow that advice? Probably not. There might be some truth behind the insult, but being open about other's faults doesn't work out that well. You don't report outright bugs. You report problems. The problem might be you yourself; the problem in software is often located 50cm in front of the screen. In social interactions, it's even more often. This procedure is well known here, we can deal with it. Follow it, we can find solutions.

Good. Now we have a list and can discuss it.

Posted Sep 30, 2007 10:04 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (4 responses)

1. Threats of sexual assault via e-mail.

Hmm... Guys usually get death threats exclusively, gals are often sexually harassed too. Do you advocate switch to death threats in both cases ? Hard to do and I'm not sure what it'll change...

2. Disparagement of women's abilities, in these very comments no less.

Fact of "real life" translated to FOSS. Note that this "diparagement" is often encouraged by these same "victims" when it's convenient for them in real life.

3. Objectification of women as sexual objects -- post a comment as a female to Slashdot and you'll see what I mean.

Hmm... If you do say that you are female in the post - you started the process of objectification (why should it matter if you are female or not?), the same - when you use nick like "tuxchick": first you point out that the most important fact about you is the gender and then you complain that people are concentrating on that. This is illogical. If don't concentrate on gender in your post - you'll get few derogatory comments anyway, but that's just how Slashdot is: there are always a lot of jerks around and they are always ready to attack gender, religion, nationality, etc.

4. Sexist advertising in major Linux journals.

Fact of life. If this page has 14 females on it (half of them pictured as sexual objects) and only 5 males - why do you expect "Linux journals" should do better ?

5. Soft porn images in illustrations in major Linux journals.

Hmm... Never seen such a problem, but Ok - this item probably real: I just don't real "major Linux journals".

The rest of post explains how we should fight sexism by treating women differently than men and mixes conclusions with premises so I'll not discuss it.

Good. Now we have a list and can discuss it.

Posted Sep 30, 2007 11:46 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

Ah, right. So women are acceptable if and only if they hide the fact that
they're female, and if they don't hide it then they deserve to be attacked
on the basis of gender?

It's odd that this only seems to apply to *women*. I don't notice anyone
criticising `AnswerGuy', for instance, for daring to use a similarly
gender-indicative term as part of his nick: and nor should they. Using
`AnswerGuy' as a nick is not the same as yelling `all that matters is that
I am male; I am a hunky beefcake and all I'm good for is male-only
tasks'[1]; equally, using the nick `tuxchick' is not saying `all that
matters is that I am female; I am asking to be attacked on the basis of my
gender'.

We've seen this before: it's the `she was asking for it' `explanation' for
all kinds of attacks on women based on things like how they dress. This
time it's only being used to `explain' a nasty attitude, but it's still
logic as faulty as when it's used to `explain' assaults.

[1] among my relatives this is pretty much restricted to 'doing the
cooking' :)

(this really is a consciousness-raising thread. It's damn valuable for
that alone.)

Good. Now we have a list and can discuss it.

Posted Sep 30, 2007 12:47 UTC (Sun) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (1 responses)

"Guy" doesn't really have strong sexist conotations. Chick, on the other hand, does (as opposed to "girl", "gal", etc.). A better example thus would be someone calling himeself "AsnwerStud" or a similar nick name.

Good. Now we have a list and can discuss it.

Posted Sep 30, 2007 13:03 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

This is an English-language dialect difference, I think.

Good. Now we have a list and can discuss it.

Posted Sep 30, 2007 13:07 UTC (Sun) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link]

> I don't notice anyone criticising `AnswerGuy', for instance,

Has he ever been after any gender-related issue? I don't remember. Similarly, I don't remember "tuxchick" being in any slightest manner being offended in any technical thread here at LWN. Can you provide a link showing otherwise?