Specificity of goals

Posted Feb 25, 2010 21:12 UTC (Thu) by utoddl (guest, #1232)
Parent article: SCALE 8x: Moving the needle

There seems to be consensus among commenters -- myself included -- that increased female participation in all things FLOSS would be a Good Thing. (Full disclosure: 49 year old white married male here.)

But, why? I don't mean why generally, I mean why specifically. Just as these Ruby people set specific goals for upping participation, I'm thinking it would be useful to articulate specifically what would/could/should be improved by increased female participation, either in the community or sub-communities, or in particular projects, or qualities of code, documentation, process, etc. Or is the general social aspect of becoming "more civilized" enough?

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Specificity of goals

Posted Feb 25, 2010 23:46 UTC (Thu) by SkyGuy (guest, #60773) [Link] (1 responses)

More talented women working on your project means more talented people
working on your project in total.

Specificity of goals

Posted Mar 12, 2010 21:30 UTC (Fri) by wswilburn (guest, #14243) [Link]

I agree. The correct way of looking at this is we should try to attract as many talented people to scientific fields as possible. If we can identify any group of any description that is under-represented (women, ethnic minorities, people with a particular hair color, whatever), it is an opportunity to find more talent. Identifying a large group of such under-represented people gives us the change to remove the (real or perceived) barriers for a lot of people at once. This is a great efficiency compared to doing this for each individual smart person, who has their own varied reasons for avoiding a scientific field!

As a side benefit, increasing the number of women tends to decrease the 'locker room' behavior that can sometimes be found in a male dominated setting. Many of us men appreciate that too.

Specificity of goals

Posted Mar 5, 2010 14:29 UTC (Fri) by sarahmei (guest, #64104) [Link]

Software development is a creative enterprise, so having multiple points of view on a team is a critical advantage. This works along all the different axes of diversity - race, culture, class, gender, etc. I decided to address gender because that is the community that I have the most contacts in.