An update on the Ada Initiative

Posted Dec 14, 2011 15:31 UTC (Wed) by tstover (guest, #56283)
Parent article: An update on the Ada Initiative

Overall I think this group is filling a need, and with a favorable disposition I'm looking at this as a positive. Paying some attention from afar, as a man, the two things I would like to see out of these efforts in the long run is to not be thought of as working a misogynistic career field, and that this is a worthwhile direction to encourage my daughter to explore as she grows.

I'll offer a warning that might be insightful for those that might not see the world this way. In the past, at least in the US, there has been a need for various "workplace advocacy" groups to help various peoples for one reason or another. While those needs in cases have been met with legitimate efforts, there have been other "shake down" con rackets that have unfortunately left a terrible taste in the minds of so many. While these are the exception not the rule, the damaging set backs can be immeasurably large. So for what it's worth, do what you can to maintain legit, honest, organization that actually helps the idea of women in open source and computing. To put it another way, when the time comes, call the police instead of celebratory lawyers and politicians.

Another neutral observation is that it sounds like some of the gender disparity in F/OSS is a function of academia. Scaled for the percent of women in computing to begin with, far more women appear to come from backgrounds in academia.

An update on the Ada Initiative

Posted Dec 14, 2011 18:49 UTC (Wed) by aliguori (subscriber, #30636) [Link] (3 responses)

Actually, there's a wide gap in the number of women in Open Source compared to the number of women in computing overall.

I think the generally accepted features are around 1% of Open Source contributors are women while 15% of computer scientists are women.

There is definitely an Open Source specific phenomenon here.

An update on the Ada Initiative

Posted Dec 14, 2011 19:17 UTC (Wed) by andrel (guest, #5166) [Link]

Even in academia, computer science departments are different than other parts of the university. If you attend a talk on Bayesian SNP calling in a genetics department, about 50% of the audience will be women. Walk across campus for the exact same talk in a computer science department, and there will only be one woman in the room.

An update on the Ada Initiative

Posted Dec 14, 2011 19:53 UTC (Wed) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't usually go to conferences, but this summer I attended one. It was not open source specific conference, although there were some open source projects there. As far as I know, there were around 150 attendees, I counted exactly two females. To me that 15% sounds quite a bit inflated, but maybe nowadays in the US that number could be close enough to the reality.

An update on the Ada Initiative

Posted Dec 14, 2011 22:54 UTC (Wed) by aliguori (subscriber, #30636) [Link]

There's no real annual census to get an accurate count, but most reference material claims 10-15%. Wikipedia agrees--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing

Based on my own corporate experience, it seems about right to me. My wife worked for a non-profit trying to encourage high school girls to start careers in STEM and that was an often used figure it seemed.