X.Org Women Outreach Program Only Turns Up Two Applicants So Far

[stiiixy]

I might add that Xorg is a very complex piece of software. I wonder how many male applicants would have applied to the same role within just a month?
I think the recent increase in sexism within the IT industry (with schemes such as this) is pretty cringeworthy but I agree these initial results don't prove anything. We should wait a bit longer.

Where are these women who are being out-sexed from the industry? Where are their story's!

[TheBlackCat]

These programs are there to create role models, to kick start interest for (future) women before their studies (get them interested by knowing that other members of their group have worked in it). Some countries have very high proportion of women in IT (e.g. India), so interest is not genetic, but it's certainly stable (low interest: fewer participants: lack of example and role models: low interest).
Increasing women interest in IT is useful because right now 40% of the potentially skilled applicant are "not interested", which is an obvious loss of economic output.
Not talking about justice or diversity here. Just plain economical practical sense.

And even compared to IT in general, it seems that women are under-represented in FOSS. If I recall correctly there have been zero women applying for the xorg funding opportunities, rather than the 10% or so people are quoting for IT in general.

Further, even if you buy the stereotypes of women being more interested in "social" things, you would expect them to be more interested in FOSS considering how community-driven FOSS is supposed to be.

And if you don't accept the stereotypes (which I don't), fixing the problems with IT in general and fixing the problems with FOSS in particular are not the same thing. Even if you go to the schools and get women more interested in IT, if the problems persist that are making FOSS unattractive to existing women in IT, those problems will likely persist even if the total number of women in IT remains the same.

[TheBlackCat]

Where are these women who are being out-sexed from the industry? Where are their story's!

Women who have tried to tell their stories got flooded with rape and death threats, sometimes even being fired from their jobs.

[pininety]

Women who have tried to tell their stories got flooded with rape and death threats, sometimes even being fired from their jobs.

Which would be illegal in all countries I know so please, point me to some woman who tried that.
Their stories must be out there or you would not know that they received death threats.

Also, do such woman get more or less death threats then a male in their position? As an example, my father got multiple death threats in his live, two which needed to be taken serious in his eyes. Was this because he was a male? No, he was working for the German National Phone company disabling phones if people did not pay their bills. This already had him receive death threats. Can you imagine this? Would he have gotten any more or any less if he would have been a woman? I doubt it.

[anda_skoa]

And while open source is waiting for this multi-year effort to pay off, proprietary desktops will be leagues ahead because they have no problem hiring the best talent regardless of age, race, or gender.

Not sure why you bring up hiring, but my guess is that most IT companies try to hire the best talent, not just those creating proprietary desktops.

Do you have any indication that vendors of other types of software or vendors on non-proprietary software have different hiring criteriat han those very few proprietary desktop vendors?

Cheers,
_

[anda_skoa]

Well, why should somone ambitious start working with X.org, everybody is saying how horrible it is and how it's obsolete because Wayland is "The way of the Future(tm)"

The article states that any project developed by the X.Org foundation is applicable, including Wayland.

Cheers,
_

[stiiixy]

Women who have tried to tell their stories got flooded with rape and death threats, sometimes even being fired from their jobs.

I pity the people in the country you live in where that happens. I truly do.

[k1l_]

Why do we need these special programs. No one prevents women from studying CS, having IT jobs, etc. If they are minority in this area than they probably don't want to do it.

That is the Moment when feminists jump in and tell everyone how sexists they are. And that girls play with puppets only because they already know at the age of 3 years old that you are going to harras her later in their CS/it job 20 Yeats later.

[TheBlackCat]

I pity the people in the country you live in where that happens. I truly do.

Don't be too quick to judge. My aunt is in IT, and is from Australia. After living away from there for a couple years, she didn't want to go back because of the attitudes of the men there.

[VinzC]

Phoronix: X.Org Women Outreach Program Only Turns Up Two Applicants So Far

Earlier this month it was announced that the X.Org Foundation would participate in the next FOSS Outreach Program for Women (OPW) organized by the GNOME Foundation. This program is very controversial but one thing is for sure: there isn't much interest from women in getting involved with X.Org...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTc5MTI

Nice hardware.