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

[TheBlackCat]

Don't forget, males and females are NOT biologically the same, no matter how you put it

That is true, but what no one has shown yet is that men are biologically, and not culturarlly, more suited for IT in general or FOSS programming in particular. It has been shown, however, that there is discrimination, both overt and subconcious, against women, and that cultural attitudes are against women in high-tech positions.

So if you are going to claim that the current gender imbalance is due to biology rather than the known discrimnation and cultural attitudes, then the burden of proof is on you to do that.

what matters is that everyone is free to do whatever they want as long as i doesn't infringes someone else's freedom. That's the only ethic that always works.

We know that both concious and subconcious discrimination happens. That is not going to end as long as there is an attitude that "men are more suited to IT than women". And that is not going to change as long as the numbers of women in the industry is so low. It is a vicious cycle, and the only way to change it is convince women that have been discouraged from participating that they are welcome.

[Kraut]

This FOSS calculator really looks discriminating to me as a man: http://qalculate.sourceforge.net/downloads.html

Somebody should force them to start a program to promote and encourage men to join that project! :P

Seriously most bigger FOSS happens over the web without people ever meeting each other. You won't hardly even know who is male/female/cat except for obvious nick names.

So if you are going to claim that the current gender imbalance is due to biology rather than the known discrimnation and cultural attitudes, then the burden of proof is on you to do that.

Why? You don't give any proof for you conjecture but want to discard others because of missing "proof"?
Man have a 4 to 8 times higher tendency to autism. Programming/Developing is a somewhat tedious occupation and I can really understand why some people can't get into it!

There is also this phenomena I did not notice strongly myself but got told by many women: In groups of woman there tends to be more backstabbing and mobbing against individuals then in groups of man. So maybe woman just lack the biological social skills for certain tasks. :P

Speaking for myself: I would not be encouraged by any kind of Men Outreach Program for Job X.

Also that gnome Outreach Program doesn't mention blacks, so it must be racist!

[wizard69]

This is far far beyond just pursuing something or anything to do with being social whatsoever. To take off some of the blinders using one direct example from https://lwn.net/Articles/417952/

I've already read that piece and again it has nothing to do with the lack of woman in tech. You run into the same drunken idiots at just about any large social gathering. It is a social problem because it is accepted by many that if you have had a little too much to drink your behavior can be excused.

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Noirin Shirley says after a man grabbed and kissed her at a conference after-party, she told him she wasn't interested, and "He responded by jamming his hand into my underwear and fumbling"
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Where I was raised a woman experiencing such behavior would have kicked the bastardized in the nuts. But again this has absolutely nothing to do with woman in tech as the same boorish behavior exists in just about any social gathering.

You are in denial when men attack women in *open source conferences* and you claim that it has no bearing on women in open source and men are not to be blamed.

No, I'm not making excuses. Your first assumption is that you have to go to a conference to be involved in open source, which is obviously wrong. It makes about as much sense as saying I can't develop for the Mac without going to WWDC.

As to men the problem there is pretty simple, not everybody attending theses sorts of conferences if a complete ass. If such an ass makes himself known to a woman it is up to her to deal with it right then which at a minimum would mean having the guy thrown out of the place and if needed have the cops called. Writing a nasty piece in an on line blog, days or weeks later, is of no value to anyone. For one, if the problem is real the perp gets away with it which leads to a repeat performance at a later dates. Second, what is written is often magnified with time, unless you know the state of mind of all involved at the time the incident occurred you will only get biased and colored descriptions of what happened.

The third problem is the assumption that this problem is a one way street and that woman never harass men or never over do the alcohol consumption. Maybe you have never had to dodge a drunken slut but let me say clearly woman are just as likely to become grabby as men. If people doubt this then all I can say is that they need to hang out in environments more balanced male to female. Frankly woman can be down right nasty if you try to brush them off.

There are a lot of guys in this forum feeling sorry for woman from what I can see, this saddens me because they need to get out into the real world where the ratio of men to woman is more balanced. Woman don't have any problem holding their own if they really want too.

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I still maintain that there are other reasons that woman prefer technical jobs outside of the computer industry. Frankly most industries treat their "computer people" like shit. You are expected to be on call 24/7 even if you are getting a piece. Compensation is pretty poor in most cases, especially when you are considered "professionals" and thus get no overtime yet are expected to be constantly available.

[wizard69]

You are hardly asking for anything new that hasn't been answered clearly many times.

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Wome...06.html#AEN165

That answers nothing really?

Whatever the problem it seems to be more developed in recent years. 20 years or so ago I worked with several female programmers and lately I've seen none fresh out of college. Frankly the impression a couple of them left was that they would never "waste" time on Linux. I think part of the problem here is that woman have a greater desire to separate the work life from the personal life. Very few open source programmers are employed as open source programmers as such the contributions they make are often done with free time in a sense recreation. So I see woman valuing their free time differently and are less likely to support open source even if they are good at what they do.

In any event the Assad reality is that we have yet to see any woman step up and identify themselves in this forum. Such input might shed some light on the subject that is currently missing.

[ripdog]

So, 8 pages of trainwreck, and I don't think anyone has really addressed the real problem with this program.

If the problem is discrimination, how exactly does paying 3 women to perform little tasks once a year help?! If the true reason women aren't contributing to open source is harassment, surely active anti-harassment education/propaganda is more important? Successful anti-harassment programs would have significant long-term benefit, while I can't see the current program having any effect whatsoever beyond getting 3 little tasks complete.

[wizard69]

So you are on of those, who are blaming victims for being victims. Way to go dude.

You are assuming that the victims are I fact victims.

Here is a suggestion for you, work as a bouncer in a bar for a few weeks or even just sit in a corner observing what goes on. Lots of stuff happens and it isn't always the guy that instigates the trouble. If that doesn't do it for you talk to a few cops that are willing to share "stories" with you. The world can be a strange place and that strangeness isn't always due to the male half of the species.

Another way to look at this is if nothing happened you would have the same woman complaining that no one noticed them. They might even suggest that all the guys at the conference where gay due to the lack of attention.

So no I don't buy this "I'm a victim"mentality every time I hear it. I've seen enough of life to know that woman drink, sometimes excessively and they do fabricate and lie. That however doesn't dismiss the fact that guys do at times get out of line, when that happens it needs to be dealt with immediately. A woman that doesn't want to see these problems addressed isn't helping anybody. Writing about alleged violations weeks later is just plain sleazy in my mind, because there is no balance and certainly no third party to address the state of mind of all involved.

In any event no body has yet to come up with a good explanation of why the problems at these conferences should have anything at all to do with keeping woman out of open source. People are trying to tie together two completely unrelated issues.

[wizard69]

Nice try, but nowhere in my post have I talked about forced quotas. Neither have I've been proposing to prefer unqualified personnel due to gender. I am talking about equally qualified women getting the same chance.

Do you understand what a quota is?

As for equally qualified woman's getting the same chance they currently do have that opportunity in open source. Nobody is stopping them at all.

How comes for example that women in same positions are paid less then men? I guess they are rejecting in large numbers to be paid better, right? http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.pdf

Which has nothing to do with the discussion.

Gender inequality has aways been and is still an issue, independent of whether you are denying it or not.

It is a fabricated issue.

Let me pass on a story from my youth. When I was young I worked on a farm part time and part of that involved bailing hay. As a young guy throwing around 120 pound bails all day was very hard work but I was physically big enough to struggle through it. One day this gal shows up want to get some work. I should say tiny gal, in any event the owner gave her a chance even though it was pretty obvious she weight less than the bails she was to handle. She gave up after a short while but the owner did the right thing in giving here an opportunity. The problem with many is that they see this as unfair and would rather have the playing field changed so that the young woman could do the job. Their rational is that the bails should be cut in half so that anyone can handle them.

As long as woman want a different playing field there will be inequality because that is what they are asking for when they pursue these special considerations. You can't demand equality when you are blatantly asking for favors. This is the fundamental problem with the GnOME foundations approach to woman. They are effectively making woman second class citizens. Like the farmer, what they should do instead is give woman the opportunity to do the same heavy lifting and see how they handle it. If they can't there really is nothing wrong with that, if they excel all the better for everyone.

[carewolf]

Nice try, but nowhere in my post have I talked about forced quotas. Neither have I've been proposing to prefer unqualified personnel due to gender. I am talking about equally qualified women getting the same chance.

How comes for example that women in same positions are paid less then men? I guess they are rejecting in large numbers to be paid better, right? .

They are not, especially in IT. In IT women are paid 10-20% more than men with similar qualification, and the same as men in similar positions. The oddity of the numbers btw, is because women in IT are promoted faster than men, or enters at higher level positions. That does produce the odd result that of the 5-10% women around 1% is in actual development as most women in IT get promoted to middle management.

[wizard69]

So, 8 pages of trainwreck, and I don't think anyone has really addressed the real problem with this program.

The real problems are that the program itself is discriminatory and the reality that such programs do more harm than good.

If the problem is discrimination, how exactly does paying 3 women to perform little tasks once a year help?!

It doesn't help that is why so many object to the program. Worst is that apparently the program has cost GnOME a good chunk of money. Money that frankly could have gone to hire more woman.

If the true reason women aren't contributing to open source is harassment, surely active anti-harassment education/propaganda is more important?

This idea is pure baloney! Harassment has never stopped woman from going into other fields. That isn't to say harassment is good, it is certainly something that needs to be minimized, but the idea that it impacts woman in this field anymore than any other field is non sense.

Successful anti-harassment programs would have significant long-term benefit, while I can't see the current program having any effect whatsoever beyond getting 3 little tasks complete.

I don't want to undervalue what these gals have done. For example a good solid translation into another language can be golden. The problem I have is that the management at the GNOME foundation apparently needed this program to support these smaller endeavors. From my perspective the GnOME foundation isn't or hasn't been balanced in selecting which projects go forward. If they had been we would see a broader array of things being accomplished and as a result a broader cross section of people represented. This may be the result of desiring to take on rigorous technical challenges to move the platform forward (a guess), instead of a more balanced growth.

[daedaluz]

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.

Please exhibit a few concrete cases of discrimination against women in software development. Concrete cases like...
- patches rejected because contributor was woman
- great developer not hired because she was woman
- suggestion rejected because it was suggested by woman

Unless you can show concrete wide-spread systematic discrimination directly based on sole notion of gender you are evidently imagining things. You and your kind are happily flaunting that term "discrimination" without any concrete evidence what so ever to back it up. You are watering down the meaning of discrimination to mean absolutely nothing.