My attempt [LWN.net]

My attempt

Posted Sep 30, 2007 15:00 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091)
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)

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.

to post comments

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.