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On 28/01/2008, Christel Dahlskjaer <christel@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > A lot of general statements and assumptions has been made and most of > them are probably true for someone, somewhere. > > "Men want to know how something works, women just want it to work." is a > statement I have come across over and over again, perhaps it is true. > "Women simply just aren't interested" is another, which may be true for > many women but not so much for the women in FOSS. Yup - but naturally - both the women and men in FOSS are self-selecting, and won't reflect the majority - most men don't find FOSS interesting, neither do most women, pulling a percentage entirely out of (thin air | my arse) say 0.5% of blokes and 0.1% of women maybe - there probably isn't all that huge difference when looking at the proportion of the general population. > Women generally are discouraged from technology, in childhood, media, > social expectations.. Yup. I'm hoping (along with many of the tech dad's and mum's I know) to overcome at least enough of that for our daughter to make her own choice, although that can be difficult because both her mum and gran, who she spends most time with are fairly traditional (despite being well qualified and read on nursery care). > Sexism -- if asked 75% of female FOSS contributors will have seen or > experienced sexism, yet, 75% of male FOSS contributors will not. Sexism > is by large still around and is perhaps one place which really puts the > FOSS community behind the rest of the world, which is a real shame, not > only does it drive away potential female contributors but it also drives > away many of the smart guys. Sexist jokes are pretty common and really > unpleasant. It's not just IT and it's not just blokes. I've worked in several areas where the reverse was entirely true, with sexism varying from totally excluded, jokes and remarks when working in a hospital ward, or kitchen with exclusively female staff, and when I worked as a barman everything from very dirty remarks to openly groping. (I'm pretty sure the girls behind the bar didn't get such a hard time, but at the same time they didn't have to collect glasses from drunken crowds). > Within 24hours of joining the Gentoo Linux project as a > developer some years back I was at the receiving end of the 'Shouldn't > you be in the kitchen?' style comments and had more invites for 'dates' > than I could count, I was pretty close to walking away again at that > moment, while the guys in question still to this day feel I should have > taken their date proposals as a compliment it did nothing but reduce me > to feeling that I was viewed as a baby making machine and that my > technical contributions were entirely invalidated. That's just sickening. I'd be furious if any community I was involved in behaved that way. > Going even further back in time, when I first started frequenting online > FOSS communities (MLs, IRC, Forums etc) I soon learnt that men got > respect, I became the subject of jokes. So I simply took on a male > persona online and happily (well, outwardly atleast) participated in the > community that way, it allowed me to be taken seriously, people stopped > accusing me of pretending to be a girl (Duh). I have later come to > realise that I was one of very many women who did this. Totally f**ked up. > When I first joined a LUG and went to my first installfest I was full of > energy and enthusiasm, within two minutes of entering the room questions > such as 'You must have taken the wrong door..?' 'Is it your first time > installing Linux?' 'Would you like me to teach you anything?' so many > times I wished to scream, in actual fact I had by this time a > understanding of Linux good enough for me to come there with the > intention of being able to help others and simply enjoy chatting to > likeminded people. Ick. A. -- http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk LAMP System Integration, Development and Hosting -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html