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

[wizard69]

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.

You have to be amazingly dense to believe that treating people differently results in greater acceptance. It doesn't in fact the evidence is that it creates an extremely hostile environment. This isn't just a case with woman either, anytime a group gets special favors, especially favors that promote people that don't have the chops, you create hostility.

Your use of the word quota here should tell you something also. Quota always result in unqualified people being brought into the ranks. Quotas are simply evil and again create more problems then they solve.

What bothers me more than anything here is that there is absolutely nothing about the tech world that is or should be difficult for a woman of suitable intelligence. If woman aren't interested in the tech world then why would you push them into a field that they won't be happy in?

The funny thing here is that most of the female programmers I know, got into the field long ago. In other words they are old farts like me. They didn't need special programs to pursue these careers and frankly some of them have done very well for themselves. Now why at this time do we all of a sudden need all of this non sense to bring woman into an industry that they are clearly rejecting in large numbers?

[r1348]

Is there a single woman partecipating to this thread? Just curious.

[RahulSundaram]

I use "wrong" words in english most of the time. I am no native speaker. But anyway its not about my English. Trying to base an argument in favor of the need of programs like WO on language used (by most i might add) is pretty weak.

I am not a native speaker either, so that is not a good reason to avoid using gender neutral pronouns when people point out the problem explicitly to you and how to correct it. The need for programs is not solely based on language use but it is one of many reasons for it since it helps to raise consciousness of the problem and help fix it. I have pointed out active forms of violence as another example which you seem to have conveniently ignored.

[Marc Driftmeyer]

You have to be amazingly dense to believe that treating people differently results in greater acceptance. It doesn't in fact the evidence is that it creates an extremely hostile environment. This isn't just a case with woman either, anytime a group gets special favors, especially favors that promote people that don't have the chops, you create hostility.

Your use of the word quota here should tell you something also. Quota always result in unqualified people being brought into the ranks. Quotas are simply evil and again create more problems then they solve.

What bothers me more than anything here is that there is absolutely nothing about the tech world that is or should be difficult for a woman of suitable intelligence. If woman aren't interested in the tech world then why would you push them into a field that they won't be happy in?

The funny thing here is that most of the female programmers I know, got into the field long ago. In other words they are old farts like me. They didn't need special programs to pursue these careers and frankly some of them have done very well for themselves. Now why at this time do we all of a sudden need all of this non sense to bring woman into an industry that they are clearly rejecting in large numbers?

Interchanging woman/women incorrectly aside, you're extremelly naive if you believe the IT World doesn't have a long history of discrimination against minorities and women, with equal talent, to that of white males in the US. I won't speak for Europe, South America, Asia and what have you, but seeing it first hand several times, myself, I have interviewed and been overriden by other interviewers who pick people that later turn out to be an ill-fit, all due to natural biases they don't even realize they possess.

In confidence, most people exhibited a predisposed prejudice for picking people that they are `most used to being around,' and never about who would be the most valuable talent added to the team(s).

IT Software Developers are pretentious, petty little `bitches' [gender neutral label] who don't like talented competition showing them up, and more often then not are striving for `job security.'

The only place I've seen it less so was at NeXT Inc., but even at Apple I witnessed some really bad decisions on hires that ultimately left the company leaving a gap in needs that would have been filled with better talent, and provided a more diverse work pool.

Real life experiences that challenge the person's emotional well-being is probably the single most difficult factor most interviewers never attempt to explore. I never cared for what you could do for us writing an optimized algorithm in this or that language, whether your mechanical engineering background was as diverse as mine [CS & ME are quite diverse to have, if you want my experience] in your undergrad studies, etc.

What I cared about is how you handle tense situations, emotional reactions to being pressured by upper managment to meet deadlines, to defer to solutions you cannot solve but your teammate(s) can, etc.

Those criteria rule out gender, race, color or creed. I've only seen a handful of people ever explore the human psyche during interviews. It's amazing how the bullshit washes away and how most potential talent fold when faced with their past and what they would do in the future. The more elastic the mind the better I see a candidate for future employment.

[89c51]

I am not a native speaker either, so that is not a good reason to avoid using gender neutral pronouns when people point out the problem explicitly to you and how to correct it. The need for programs is not solely based on language use but it is one of many reasons for it since it helps to raise consciousness of the problem and help fix it. I have pointed out active forms of violence as another example which you seem to have conveniently ignored.

If you mean the lwn article i wont appologize for other people being morons. Not my problem. Yes they exist and you can meet them at a supermarket at a conference or anywhere. The fact that they are specialized or capable in something doesn't mean that they can't be complete jerks.

Deal with it and stop whining about human behavior. Its what it is. If you don't like their behavior avoid them plain and simply. And in the case of FOSS contribution you don't have to like the people you contribute to the same projects.

[Guest]

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.

Examples please. I didn't ever met with so called gender based discrimination. If someone's good at something he's not being discriminated (ignore racism, because we're talking about civilized world). It seems women are just weak programmers. They're also weak soldiers, sport car drivers and miners. It has nothing to do with discrimination. They're different than us, you know (I hope you don't buy gender monkeys claims)? I've always known gnome is a political project, but until now I wasn't aware it's being led by feminists - be it male of female.

[Spittie]

Can we not get into the he/she/they/xe discussion?

https://www.wordnik.com/words/he

• Used to refer to a person whose gender is unspecified or unknown.
• Refers to a person whose gender is unknown.
• Any one; the man or person; used indefinitely, and usually followed by a relative pronoun.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/he

• anyone (without reference to sex)

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/he

• used in a generic sense or when the sex of the person is unspecified

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/he

• refers to an indefinite antecedent such as one, whoever, or anybody.
• refers to a person or animal of unknown or unspecified sex.
• anyone (without reference to sex).

[peppercats]

Can someone please explain to me what's stopping women from contributing to FOSS projects?

[nanonyme]

"Based on gender stereotypes" ... already off to a bad start. Even then, a "documentation program" that pulls in ALL genders would be more effective, both costs-wise and productivity-wise, than this "Women's Outreach Program" that focuses a part of it's time on Documentation.

Sure, as long as the campaign manages to get it through to people that you don't need to be a maths guru or understand how programs work to be a documenter. You do *not* need to be a software developer to do that. There are a lot of technical writers who do better job at writing documentation than software developers do. There's a huge risk that if you try to sell it as a "software documentation project", women will just discard it as programming. Which it is not.

[RahulSundaram]

If you mean the lwn article i wont appologize for other people being morons. Not my problem. Yes they exist and you can meet them at a supermarket at a conference or anywhere. The fact that they are specialized or capable in something doesn't mean that they can't be complete jerks.

Deal with it and stop whining about human behavior. Its what it is. If you don't like their behavior avoid them plain and simply. And in the case of FOSS contribution you don't have to like the people you contribute to the same projects.

When people are attacked and discriminated against and your response shows no empathy nor any suggestions to address the problem and you actively rail up against any effort to help, you are contributing to the problem. OPW on the other hand *is* dealing with it.