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 30, 2007 4:02 UTC (Sun) by tuxchick (guest, #42009)
In reply to: Ok. If the issue is "problems faced by women in FOSS" then where is the list ? by evgeny
Parent article: To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

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.

to post comments

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.