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

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

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.