X.Org Is Looking For Some Female Help

[89c51]

Cool! I'll tell that to all the women with a PhD in computer science there are in my CS lab. And trust me, there are more than 10 and they all kick asses!

Have you asked any of them why she doesn't participate in FOSS projects?

[nanonyme]

As a personal opinion I don't think it's unfair to get minimum raises while on maternity/paternity leave. Pre-emptive lower wages during recruitment is

[Serafean]

It is great that some women are good at programming and related things but they are fewer in numbers than men and I think it is time that society accepts that that's the way it is. Affirmative action policies are very counter-productive and they will just make projects inefficient at best or even ruin whole projects.

While I agree with you in principle, in this sentence you hint at IMO the most improtant thing in this entire discussion (but you never mention it flat out) : Equal opportunity. The day we get to equal opportunity everywhere, the war is over. Unfortunately we're far from it.

Complete equality is simply not possible until men start carrying children...

S.

[BlackStar]

It's also comments like yours which show exactly why so many react strongly to a simple outreach program.

This, right here. You're completely ignoring the (whole history of) posts like "we need more women in CS... just cause"

My comment was directed to people saying that women should be paid less because they might get pregnant. That's blatant discrimination and if you support that you are sexist and a shitty human being.

If not then my comment is not directed at you.

And yes, we need to increase the ratio of women in IT because that's the only way to break the status quo of toxicity and exclusion. Noone gives up their privileges willingly.

[gutigen]

And yes, we need to increase the ratio of women in IT because that's the only way to break the status quo of toxicity and exclusion. Noone gives up their privileges willingly.

It is not men's job to do that. The moment you make it a men's job to bring more women into IT, this whole affair puts women in lost, inferior position - yet again they need our help to achiev something. Fuck that. Women have to grow some balls, make awesome code and contribute - that's all it takes.

The fact that X.org is looking for some female help is the most sexist message they can send without getting swarmed by angry feminists. This is so disrespectful.

[Isedonde]

So we have a comment from India explaining that in India, there are a lot of women in the IT industry and it's not a problem at all. I think that's pretty cool, especially considering the social status of women in parts of India.

And it shows that all the "women don't like IT, they all want to be kindergarten teachers!!1" comments are bullshit.

If I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher, some people would probably assume that I'm a pedophile just because I'm male. It's similar for women in IT. Other women might think that she's a nerdy geeky strange woman and don't want to be friends, because it's even "stranger" for a woman to work in IT than it is for a non-geek male. Men and women might think that she sucks at her job and should rather be a kindergarten teacher. Some male IT professionals love sexist jokes, that would annoy her (and rightfully so). Sure, some/most(?) male IT guys would enjoy having more girls around, and not mainly to marry them (although that might be a nice thought for some as well), but just to make the work environment more diverse. I mean, diversity doesn't hurt and it's boring to work with 100% geeks all the time (I'm exaggerating in case you didn't notice).

So I'm all for the Gnome Outreach Programme. :-) Anything that helps to change the "IT is not for women, unless they are full time geeks like their fellow male IT workers" stereotype is a nice thing. I just hope they find someone to work on actual code. Docs, design, translation, community management, whatever? it's important, but to challenge the stereotype, we need female coders! Basically someone like Michael's wife. :-) I wish my husband-if-Germany-allowed-that would use C++ more than I do.

[MuPuF]

Have you asked any of them why she doesn't participate in FOSS projects?

Why did you assume none of them do? Some do, but just like men, they already have a CS job, they don't always want to bring it back home. I'm in a research lab, people here mostly like to understand problem. They don't like engineering.

I was merely saying to the person I answered to that his vision was flawed and that there are many women doing PhDs. Sure, we don't have parity, but they are well represented, especially in mathematics or bio-informatics. That's the case at least in Bordeaux.

[Ranjak]

I too would like to see more women in IT/CS, but I'm not sure this kind of program is the right way to go about it.
They might see this program as an acknowledgement of their underrepresentation in the field, and it may make them feel all the more illegitimate.
It would be better IMO to tackle the problem at its supposed source, maybe have CS people intervene in schools, give CS courses a better visibility, and offer more CS reorientation possibilities, so that it would be seen as a more "natural" career choice rather than a niche field.

[kaprikawn]

Your voice of reason is appreciated.

Every second comment here proves how this outreach program is indeed necessary. It is disheartening to see alleged Free software supporters support discrimination against half the human population based on their gender. Toxic behavior might be expected in the gamer culture (which comprises mostly teens and tweens), but I would have expected at least some basic human decency in FOSS. It appears my faith in humanity may have been misplaced.

Indeed, reading these comments, I'm reminded of the quote:

...the comments on any article about feminism justify feminism...

While this article isn't on feminism, I still think it's applicable.

[TheBlackCat]

Women have to grow some balls, make awesome code and contribute - that's all it takes.

If that was really all it took, we wouldn't be having this discussion. The problem is that, in reality, that open-source communities have done a lot to make female contributors unwelcome. The way you chose to phrase that sentence is symptomatic of the problem.