On Friday 18 June 2010 17:54:51 Administrator wrote:
2010/6/18 Shayon Mukherjee
: I suppose there are not many who would prefer to sit in front of xChat and talk about development .But they are interested in such things and we need to find better ways to coordinate with them .So yes , if you dont see much of female population around openSUSE , it is kinda 'women-unfreindly' :-) .
That's a stretch. You are either friendly or unfriendly with users. Women or not, it makes no difference IMHO, and it should not be targeted in a special way. If they are interested in taking part to the community, I don't see anything that limits that (feel free to point me to something, I might have missed something).
That's one of the things I learned in the last 20 years of colored rights / gay rights / women's rights - that if you're not part of the group that feels excluded / disadvantaged then you don't see the things that are doing it. Few people discriminate deliberately, but many (including I) do it without thought because we're not aware. You become aware by asking and listening.
That is _exactly_ the point. One doesn't even realise our behaviour is
discriminatory. It's not to say we're all evil asshats, but we all do, it
simply comes from the environment and a strong set of wrong beliefs (that IT
is not for women, that women are not good at tech in general, the
"secretaries" thing (= the usual noob user being secretaries, which are
usually women), etc...)
Saying "well, they can just step up and say what's wrong" isn't the right
approach either. If we actually want to be much friendlier to e.g. women, then
we _must_ do some sort of positive discrimination. What I mean by that is e.g.
- putting the (arguably, very few as of now) women in our community forward
- actively seek feedback and proposals on what we should do to achieve that
goal (by asking whom is concerned -- in this case, women)
- actively seek feedback on what we're doing wrong (and I'm sure that's
plenty)
But those are just ideas, and the only useful feedback can only come from
women (in this case).
On a side note, I think that having a pink wallpaper as a measure to be more
proactive towards women is exactly such a case of discrimination ¬¬
The sort of things I've heard by discussing with several women (who try to
make FOSS more open and attractive to women) is along the lines of actively
poking women for their feedback, their presence, putting them into the
spotlight. Because they are generally less confident to step up on their own,
at least in the beginning.
Given the situation in FOSS, and IT in general, this is quite understandable.
Keep in mind that when they do so, they do it in an environment where ~98% are
men, with a non-negligible amount of those men doing sarcastic comments about
women in IT. So it's not just "well, if something is wrong, they can just step
up and say it". Discriminatory opinions and comments about women in IT are
everywhere, both in professional and opensource environments. If you're
curious about it, just try to pay attention to it for a while. We all do.
And I'm sure everyone has already witnessed what happens when a women says she
is on IRC.
But I'm quite confident that Katarina could tell us a lot more about that, and
possibly also about what we should do (and especially what we shouldn't do) to
make it a friendlier place for women. I guess pretty much everyone would agree
that having more female contributors could really bring more energy, fresh
ideas and sometimes slightly differentiated opinions to the community.
cheers
--
-o) Pascal Bleser