What GNOME's Women Outreach Program Is Paying For This Summer

[phoronix]

Phoronix: What GNOME's Women Outreach Program Is Paying For This Summer

The GNOME Outreach Program for Women recently came under fire after finding out it was a big contributor to the GNOME Foundation running short on money, due to administering the program, fronting the associated costs, etc. We've already covered the 2014 Google Summer of Code projects so in this article we're taking a look at what the new GNOME women developers are getting done the next few months...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTY4NzA

[Daktyl198]

I've got some ideas:
How about we destroy the entire program, stop treating women like frail little things that have to be goaded into the "men's world" of programming, and just let those who want to code do it. There shouldn't be any gender seperation in programming (or design): Good Code is Good Code, no matter who it's written by and a Good Design is a Good Design no matter who it was thought up by.

I'm fully expecting a huge backlash for this, but I don't understand why we treat women so differently in the tech world...
(P.S. another example is "Women in Tech Day". Like wtf, why do we have that? Do we have a "Men in Tech Day"? No? Then we shouldn't have the former either)

[lysbleu]

I've got some ideas:
How about we destroy the entire program, stop treating women like frail little things that have to be goaded into the "men's world" of programming, and just let those who want to code do it. There shouldn't be any gender seperation in programming (or design): Good Code is Good Code, no matter who it's written by and a Good Design is a Good Design no matter who it was thought up by.

I'm fully expecting a huge backlash for this, but I don't understand why we treat women so differently in the tech world...
(P.S. another example is "Women in Tech Day". Like wtf, why do we have that? Do we have a "Men in Tech Day"? No? Then we shouldn't have the former either)

It's pragmatism. If more women work in this domain, more women might therefore be tempted to get in there, with talented persons amongst them. How a program aiming at having more talented persons working on FOSS could be bad ?

[nanonyme]

I've got some ideas:
How about we destroy the entire program, stop treating women like frail little things that have to be goaded into the "men's world" of programming, and just let those who want to code do it. There shouldn't be any gender seperation in programming (or design): Good Code is Good Code, no matter who it's written by and a Good Design is a Good Design no matter who it was thought up by.

I'm fully expecting a huge backlash for this, but I don't understand why we treat women so differently in the tech world...
(P.S. another example is "Women in Tech Day". Like wtf, why do we have that? Do we have a "Men in Tech Day"? No? Then we shouldn't have the former either)

TBH based on gender stereotypes the documentation and localization being under this program makes a lot of sense to me. The stereotype goes that women are more linguistically talented than men on average so following that assumption it would make sense to involve women with documentation and localization projects also with computing. People outside the computer industry might not understand that such activities don't have much to do with programming so you don't need to be a supernerd but them done by someone not talented in it can make an entire software project fail.

[89c51]

It's pragmatism. If more women work in this domain, more women might therefore be tempted to get in there, with talented persons amongst them. How a program aiming at having more talented persons working on FOSS could be bad ?

A talented person with interest in a field will just submit patches. They just have to be correct. Everything else is just bullshit.

[RahulSundaram]

A talented person with interest in a field will just submit patches. They just have to be correct. Everything else is just bullshit.

Maybe in the ideal or naive view of the world, that is true. In reality though, gender based discrimination exists in the general industry and open source world in particular and finding ways to counter balance that is a good thing. That is the reason, a large number of organizations are involved in doing this.

[schmidtbag]

I'm fully expecting a huge backlash for this, but I don't understand why we treat women so differently in the tech world...
(P.S. another example is "Women in Tech Day". Like wtf, why do we have that? Do we have a "Men in Tech Day"? No? Then we shouldn't have the former either)

I fully understand what you're saying but what I think you're forgetting is many women are DISCOURAGED to get into tech fields. If you want examples, go to websites like notalwaysright.com, search for any tech related thing, and you'll find an insane amount of bigotry toward women. It's a shame we still have to live in a world like this.

But, if women aren't appreciated and wanted in tech fields, then they'll never feel the want or ability to join. Give women a dedicated incentive to do something for the linux (or at least gnome) community and it could really be appealing to them.

On a side note, there are people like nixiepixel on youtube. I can't really tell if she's helping or hurting the appeal of more women joining the linux community. I think the fact that she's attractive and self-passionate about linux helps make linux seem "cool" to some, on the other hand, she's not really helping women in the developer or professional realm.

[log0]

I've got some ideas:
How about we destroy the entire program, stop treating women like frail little things that have to be goaded into the "men's world" of programming, and just let those who want to code do it. There shouldn't be any gender seperation in programming (or design): Good Code is Good Code, no matter who it's written by and a Good Design is a Good Design no matter who it was thought up by.

I'm fully expecting a huge backlash for this, but I don't understand why we treat women so differently in the tech world...
(P.S. another example is "Women in Tech Day". Like wtf, why do we have that? Do we have a "Men in Tech Day"? No? Then we shouldn't have the former either)

The problem is, that women are treated differently in the real tech world right now. The solution approached here, is to increase their quota to the point, where the tech world accepts them and stops treating them differently.

[Calinou]

I've got some ideas:
How about we destroy the entire program, stop treating women like frail little things that have to be goaded into the "men's world" of programming, and just let those who want to code do it. There shouldn't be any gender seperation in programming (or design): Good Code is Good Code, no matter who it's written by and a Good Design is a Good Design no matter who it was thought up by.

I'm fully expecting a huge backlash for this, but I don't understand why we treat women so differently in the tech world...
(P.S. another example is "Women in Tech Day". Like wtf, why do we have that? Do we have a "Men in Tech Day"? No? Then we shouldn't have the former either)

The problem is that they pay women, but not men ‑ unless transgender? The case may not entirely be lost.
It also perpetrates the “Women like money” stereotype.

I sure would really like to get paid for working on free/libre software (which is ethical, unlike proprietary software).

[omer666]

(Shit, not again...)