X.Org Is Looking For Some Female Help

[gens]

We don't know, but statistics don't lie.

sorry for picking you to quote, this is more of generic

there are lies, damned lies and statistics
because statistics are misleading (because of how they are measured, but that is not the case here; and because they make people form wrong opinions)

this way of thinking is popular in gnome
please do not make it popular among other projects

no scientist should trust statistics more then just plain facts derived from research, thinking, measuring (in detail) and discussion
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking)

[schmidtbag]

You are looking at the Symptome(result) and not at the cause.

And, what do you propose? Yes, fighting the cause is obviously the better choice, but people (the cause of the issue) are hard to change. The cause of women being discriminated in the IT field is due to how much that strays from "cultural norms". Do you understand the difference between a disease and a syndrome? A syndrome has an unknown cause, but that doesn't mean there aren't fixes or treatments to people who have one. On the other side of the coin, a disease has a known cause, but it doesn't mean there's a cure.

So sure, specifically looking for a woman to fill this position is not going to stop oppression and all that other crap. But if whoever fills this position does a good job, then it's a decent step closer to fighting the problem. How you might ask? It's showing how there really IS demand and potential for women in the computer field and some people actually welcome it, no much these women think they're taking the wrong course in life.

And dont tell others to not call it discrimination because you think it is none while you otoh say its the discrimineted one to decide.

In the culture of political correctness, only YOU can choose to take something offensive or discriminatory that has no intention to be. For example, if I were Hatian and lived in England, someone may classify me as an African American. Both terms are wrong, and yet it is supposed to be a politically correct term. Should I be offended? There's 2 ways of looking at that:
1. Yes, that is offensive because someone is walking around eggshells trying to make me feel comfortable.
2. No, it's not offensive because any DECENT human being just shouldn't give a damn. If you're not intentionally being offensive and if offense is intentionally not taken, then discrimination doesn't apply and being PC doesn't matter.
That being said, it is understandable why highlighting the fact that women are discriminated against may be offensive, but if that's as far as you see it, that's being very closed minded. Awareness needs to be raised somehow.

[F i L]

Right now, meetings at XDC are mostly composed of white-middle class men (See LWN's photo of XDC2012.).

Yeah, and? The NBA is composed of mostly tall rich black men... you know why? It's not because of discrimination, it's because tall men are better at basketball, black people are genetically taller (statistically speaking), and playing in the NBA makes you rich! This really isn't that hard to figure out, so stop trying to pretend everyone is equal in every way. This is why we give equal opportunities for anyone to join, and the best people for the job (ie, the most qualified people with interest) get the gig.

Somehow, we must be discriminating against women and they may feel rejected by our community.

No it doesn't mean that. Most likely they're just not interested in the same way (for whatever reason), at least not right now. It's not sexism, or racism, or classism... white and asian men are more interested in (and perhaps even better at, for whatever cultural or genetic reason) computer science, and that's why we dominate the industry. There's no rule preventing women from joining, they just aren't (as much). And that says nothing about the existing community's attitude towards them. You're just projecting sexism, classism, etc.. and it's not only insulting to us (by claiming the imbalance is due to a character flaw in the existing community) but also women as well (by suggesting that the main reason they're so misrepresented is due to an inability to deal with a large group of the opposite gender on their own).

When the Zoe Quinn thing is all over the place you got the nerve to say crap like that?

Ridiculous. Zoe Quinn is a bad joke. You should find a better example if you intend to convince anyone (with a brain) of large-scale sexism in CS or gaming.

[drspinderwalf]

Wow, so many males get so butthurt. Yes, there are some nasty feminists out there, but it's like judging a whole race based on some bad eggs.

Grow a pair. Some people want to do something and you might not like the thing that they're doing. They're going to do it anyway. The important question:

Is it hurting anyone?

If no, then kindly do something more productive with your life than rage about them on a tabloid forum.

I also kindly point anyone that doubts aggression in the IT sphere to read this excellent LWN article:

http://lwn.net/Articles/417952/

This pervades not only Open-source but any sort of IT field - The difference is that it's suppressed in the corporate world because there are liabilities. IT is a nasty industry that is overpopulated with zealots and overvalued.

[caligula]

Maybe they are not interested because it is not socially acceptable to do it? It also doesn't explain why some fields got deserted by one gender and got replaced the other. Women used to be a majority of the workforce in computer science after the second world war, why would have they suddenly decided it wasn't interesting anymore? Your analysis may be a little simplistic.

In any case, we are not taking any of the freedom or funding opportunity from anyone. We are just sending a message, no need to tell people what to do based on their gender

Information technology and programming has also changed a lot during our history. The programming is much much more analytical now. DIfferent types of persons do it now. Think about it for a second. The first machines could barely handle programs up to 1000 instructions. Now you have hundreds of millions of lines of code. And the languages didn't even have FOR, DO-WHILE, recursion, higher order functions, only GOTOs. Now you have monad transformers, continuation passing style, distributed systems, multi-layer web frameworks.. More and more women quit as the course material gets harder during the studies. Finally when you're a PhD in theoretical CS or programming oriented CE, the women are all gone.

Same thing with running the business side. Women inherently are afraid of taking risks and doing hard decisions. I'm not saying they all are. But statistically most are. Those that like the stuff are equally good at it if not better than men. But the competitive and technical topics are something that women in general seem to hate / fear / get bored with.

[Ancurio]

For what it's worth, my wife (photo), majored in CS... She codes more in C++ than I do these days.

That sounds pretty cool actually. Is she involved with any known FOSS projects?

[F i L]

Wow, so many males get so butthurt.

How ironic.

The important question:

Is it hurting anyone?

If no, then kindly do something more productive with your life than rage about them on a tabloid forum..

Maybe you should take your own advice instead of hypocritically criticizing others for voicing an opinion on a subject. Unless you think doing so passive aggressively somehow justifies your input.
And for the record, I'm not opposed to Xorg engaging in women outreach programs to entice more women into CS, at all.

[Ekianjo]

Oh yeah, there's absolutely no toxic atmosphere for women in IT whatsoever, they are underrepresented just because they don't actually like computers, so actively reaching out to them is definitely discriminating against white heterosexual middle-class men, who are always so terribly disadvantaged in every job interview.

Really? When the Zoe Quinn thing is all over the place you got the nerve to say crap like that?

IMO the only criticism here is that there's no similar program targeted at people of color and poor people.

OMG you are being so discriminative. You forgot to mention that there's no similar program target at handicapped people, dwarves, self-declared aliens, people of mixed colors, and let's not forget the 1% top incomes who are largely underrepresented as well.

[Ekianjo]

The common element in all these kind of threads is that people who are advocating for anti-discrimination measures usually have a strong difficulty to connect with reality. In their mind he world should be equally shared among all kind of human beings, regardless of what they are made of, and that would be the ideal world or something like that.

The problem I have with this kind of rhetoric is that it completely fails to recognize that there are fundamental differences between human beings, that men and women's brains, for example, do not work exactly in the same way and that it could very well lead to having gender-specific capabilities on both sides. But hey, let's ignore all the science and pretend that Men and Women are equally good at everything, and that Women should start fixing more cars, and Men should start taking care of babies at home more. All we have learnt though thousands of years of human civilization if just bullshit, finally the modern Man has all the answers as to what's wrong with society and how to fix it to make the world a little more like Carebears'.

[Ekianjo]

For what it's worth, my wife (photo), majored in CS... She codes more in C++ than I do these days.

Sample size n=1. Well it's always good to have counter-examples, but I'm pretty sure most wives do not have much skills in C++. Not saying it's a bad thing to have, though.