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

[brk0_0]

They are when you're talking about representation as a group in IT. Same goes with constrution. Men are a minority in child care.

Meaning...?

[dlang]

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)"

Is it any surprise that very few people want to join up to do hard work to learn something that everyone is telling them is worthless?

[tkmorris]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiJVJ5QRRUE

Also see Norway experience hunting for and paying extra for male nurses.

[nanonyme]

Theres about ~50% or so people that are women though... Not really what I call a "minority"

Isn't the talk about underrepresentation rather than minorities anyway? It is suspicious there aren't more women in the software industry but while there's a lot of sexism on the Internet, I wouldn't immediately accept it being the root cause. Nor discrimination. Software engineering may be hitting the segment of women that barely exists: Too social for the mathematically inclined and not social enough for the rest

[doom_Oo7]

Isn't the talk about underrepresentation rather than minorities anyway? It is suspicious there aren't more women in the software industry but while there's a lot of sexism on the Internet, I wouldn't immediately accept it being the root cause. Nor discrimination. Software engineering may be hitting the segment of women that barely exists: Too social for the mathematically inclined and not social enough for the rest

In my engineering school where there is a 3 years computer science degree course, we were about 105 guys and 10 girls.
There are other egree courses, for instance electronics, and there are more girls. IT is every year the least appealing to girls.
So the problem is clearly sometimes *before* the end of the studies... And certainly even before high school graduation, considering that even 1st year freshman in CS are an overwhelming majority of boys.

[Ancurio]

"I am a white male who has never encountered discrimination or sexism in my life, but here's why this program is completely unnecessary".

[kaprikawn]

"I am a white male who has never encountered discrimination or sexism in my life, but here's why this program is completely unnecessary".

^ This ^

[stiiixy]

Meaning...?

The question had already answered. I was just putting it another way.

[erendorn]

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.

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.

[kpedersen]

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.