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GNOME Reaches Out to Women
Dominic Hargreaves writes "This year GNOME received 181
applications to Google's Summer
of Code program, yet none were from women. As a result, they've
decided to address this imbalance by launching an outreach program to
sponsor three female students to work on GNOME-related projects this
summer." Most any science department will tell you that the amount of interest and involvement of women pales next to men of similar age and background. Is this sponsorship a creative way to get women interested in GNOME, or is it merely sexist?
traditionally "masculine" enterprises.
Of course, as long as you ignore the fact that early computer science was a traditonally mixed gender group, and before the dawn of computers came the Computers, a legion of women who sprung into action in wartime to compute firing tables for artillery.
http://www.dun-na-ngall.com/kay.html
The president of Harvard said absolutely nothing like women can't participate in math and science fields. Most of the discussion on that topic was ridiculous hyperbole propagated by people who for some reason decided to be upset by it. His speech was given in the context of empowering women, not belittling them, and most who report on this issue seem to have missed his point.
All he said was that it might be worth our time to look into biological causes that draw women away from math and science. He did not say anything to the effect that women aren't as good as men. Saying that men and women might be different seems about as shocking to me as saying that, OMG, women are so much better at giving birth than men. Shocking.
If you don't believe me, read the transcript and tell me what he said that's insulting.
Speaking of sexist, that comment is uncalled for. Contrary to what the (former?) President of Harvard thinks, women are indeed capable of participating in math and science fields. It is merely social structure that "guides" them away from these traditionally "masculine" enterprises.
Im tired of hearing this bullshit argument. The reason there is a vast imbalance of men vs women in math and science fields is not because of a social structure that "guides" them away from these fields. It's because they just aren't interested.
Women are more social than men. Math and Science fields many times requires no social interaction. Coding away for hours at a time alone may be interesting to a lot of guys (including me), but not women. There are of course, exceptions.
Why can't we just conclude that men and women have different goals and ambitions in life rather than trying to push everyone along the same path? On the flip-side, there is a large imbalance of men and women in the nursing and elementary school fields. I don't see many groups getting up and arms over it.
"Any disparity of gender, of any kind, that works against women, is enough evidence of sexism to get sued onto the street." So, in short, neither. They're just covering their asses."
This may be true, but sometimes a project can benefit from another angle. Gnome really seems like its trying to be the desktop top that is accessible to everyone. By having women participate, there is a possibility that they will bring in ideas that male centric project would not have had. The truth is though, many of the female developers I know about tend to be just as shy as your average male coder.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
What it clearly isn't, is supremacist.
Racism and sexism and all these other discriminations are perfectly acceptable, and even commendable in many cases, such as this one.
The problems these kinds of integration efforts solve are:
There would also be some real practical value to figuring out why (structurally speaking) there is so little female participation.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I'm a woman in IT. I'm a developer. And I think it's sexist. If I were in the USA, I might have applied, however i'm not, i'm in New Zealand.
Regardless, programs like this miss the point entirely. The main problem is not a lack of female applicants, its the lack of women in IT. This does not stem from a lack of funding or information - we all have access to the internet.
It stems from the basic belief that computers are a mans domain, and that even if a woman is a programmer extra-curricular activities concerning programming is taking it too far. The solution to this problem is to change peoples attitude toward technology-related sciences, not to throw money at it.
When I first showed interest in computers as a child, it was frowned upon by most of my family in a big way. Change it there, and there will be more openly geeky girl IT grads that will participate in the community without the need for extra money being thrown at them.
I don't like these gender balances because they tend to have tunnel vision. We are greatly rewarding mediocre women in engineering fields due to their low numbers, but we aren't doing the same for men in other fields.
How many men get special seats in programs for nursing, education, etc., where the field is dominated by women? In fact, of the people who get college degrees, only 43% are men. Why doesn't this get the same attention that the lack of women in science and engineering gets?
All that we can accomplish by trying to perform gender balances is to promote mediocracy from the minority gender.
I've never been a big believer that bias can be cured by more bias.
Simple fact: there are vastly more women and minorities in the workplace now than there were before affirmative action and forced equal access to education. It works. It's not flawless, and it's not a cure-all, but it has produced results.
Affirmative action only leads to people thinking that a miss-represented group of people were only hired because of affirmative action.
Who gives a shit? Those are the same people who didn't think women and minorities belonged in their workplace in the first place.
Honestly, in a field so utterly dominated by men that a female software engineer is a bit of a rarity, you have to be pretty insecure to be bothered by the fact that one free software project wants to try to get a whopping three women involved. In any event, the odds are that your job and mine are both going to India long before they are threatened by any kind of domestic quota system.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
why didnt these superior candidates apply for the google summer of code in the first place then? 181 male applicants and zero female applicants. I have no problem with them getting the positions if they really are the superior candidates, but if that were the case wouldnt they have at the very least applied and (all things being equal) probably been accepted in the first place?
TIAEAE!
I have *NEVER* met a male nursing student, and I know quite a few nursing students. Nobody gives a crap about that?
Actually, there's lots of stuff being done by nursing schools to bring in male students. Partly to address the nursing shortage, and partly to achieve gender equity (or at least get closer to it) just for the sake of doing it.
For one of my classes last semester, we were supposed to pick an area where there was a huge imbalance in gender representation and explore the causes. I picked nursing, interviewed 100+ male nurses and nursing students and asked them why they picked the field, what issues they ran into etc. - almost all of them pointed out that it was so *incredibly* dominated by women that they felt uncomfortable in the environment. Further, many expressed concerns that they'd be percieved as less masculine by those outside their profession - basically "People will think I'm gay!" By the time I'd finished my report, several of the male students hd dropped out of their programs.
For women in technology (of which I used to be one before I went back to school to study psychology), a huge issue is the "swinging dick" factor. Women and men tend to have different priorites and needs in order to be happy in a workplace - one of the big ones for many women is the social sphere. I know that, for me, the deciding factor was that I wound up feeling as if I was spending a third of my life around people I didn't particularly like, didn't find to be particularly able to have small-talk with, and generally just left me feeling pretty cut-off from the world.
(And, for anyone who says "Work is about work, not socialization, silly female!" let me just say: Men tend to also have certain needs from a workplace that seem just as silly - that whole alpha monkey/competitive thing is pretty goddamn funny and sad. Isn't work supposed to be about work, not establishing who's dick is bigger?)
Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is that yeah - women and men DO have (in the US, at least) the same theoretical access to whatever workplaces (with some exceptions) - but that doesn't mean that in practical terms a given professional space will be equally hospitable to both genders. Guys don't do "girl" jobs because they're afraid they'll look gay, gals don't do "boy" jobs because they they'll wind up in testosterone central. That kind of atmosphere presents a barrier to opportunity that a lot of people don't really see until they run right into it. So, from my point of view, a plan to address some of that stuff would be a good thing, regardless of the industry.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Do men that go into nursing get a preference because there's more women than men? (An honest question).
Emphatically, yes. Nursing programs are AVIDLY trying to recruit men.
I posted an explanation of why this kind of equalizing isn't a bad thing - why what *looks* like a level playing field with open access to all is not, in fact, level nor open. I'll give the short version here: it's about the social environment.
Many men don't go into nursing because they're afraid it will make them seem less manly. Many women don't go into tech because they're afraid they'll be in a socially/emotionally desolate nerdspace. If things can be done to reduce the social anxiety that is keeping people away from jobs they'd otherwise be highly capable of doing, then that's a good thing.
And to anyone who'd say "If they can't overcome a little anxiety, fuck 'em, we don't want 'em and they obviously don't want it enough!" - it isn't a *little* anxiety - it's a LOT. For anyone who disagrees, I suggest they go do something that is usually very at odds with their typical gender roles and see just how "little" anxiety they feel. The "If they can't hack it" line tends to come from people who are fortunate enough to have their interests and the social spheres line up well enough.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
This isn't about the ability to compete. The problem is that females didn't even try to compete.
I find it hard to believe that there are no women who would be able to do this sort of work. There must be other reasons for it. The reactions to this story provide a few clues.
Let's look at the comments so far--how many of them are from opinionated males who seem to like making judgments about the abilities of women to cut it in programming? How many comments have lamented the fact that some fields are dominated by women (last time I looked at applications for nursing scholarships the number of male applicants was > 0%)? How many comments refer to porn, lesbians, cunnilingus and/or dating?
I strongly suspect that the reason women are staying away from this field is the people they find in it. Perhaps if IT were a field where women could find a little respect they may be more likely to apply for positions. And yes boys, if you want to find a date, respecting the object of your affections may be a good place to start!
Cogito, ergo sig.
Fairness is indeed fun.
Do you truly think that attempts at gender equality can only accomplish the promotion of mediocrity (I think you meant mediocrity, not mediocracy, although in either case my response is the same), and nothing else whatsoever?
Are you certain that:
- Currently, women's positions in the field accurately matches their skills and qualifications?
- Girls and young women are given adequate education, motivation, and acceptance when it comes to even considering entering the field?
Given that you don't know, for a fact, that the answer to both of those questions is 'yes', then how can you possibly know that addressing those issues cannot help, but can only promote mediocrity?Now, be honest. You don't actually know the answer to those two questions. You know there are other possible outcomes besides the promotion of mediocrity (or mediocracy). So why--truly, honestly, why--did you make the statement above? What beliefs, assumptions, prejudices or predilections do you have which lead to such a circumvention of logic and rationality?
They might find three superior candidates, or they might not. If they only get a small number of female applications after this announcement, they may end up doing the best with what they have just to fill a quota.
Think about it this way: if only three women apply at this point, all three are guaranteed to get the positions. Their combined intellect could be the equivalent of a doorknob's, and they'd still get in, but qualified men wouldn't even have a chance.
Besides, if they're confident that they can find three or more "superior" candidates, why not just put out a call for female applicants and let them compete with the men? If the women are superior, they'll win, right?
Incidentally, I'm female myself, but I hate discrimination of any sort. Giving a woman a job or a scholarship purely because she has a vagina is just as bad as giving a man that same position purely because he has a penis. Encourage all genders to apply, and let the best candidates win. Hell, I don't even have a problem with putting out a call for female applicants or even refusing to make a final decision before X women have applied, just as long as gender is ignored in the actual application evaluation process.
I don't know if things are different now but I do have to say that 25 years ago, it wasn't the men that were trying to keep me out of a career in computer science, it was the women. It was the female teachers at my middle school who couldn't understand why I wanted to take shop instead of sewing class, nuns at my all girl's school trying to talk me out of advanced math classes and into the humanities and older female relatives who on hearing that I was going to engineering school congratulated me because I'd find a husband there.
I never really saw a lot of "real" sexism from the men in my college. Yeah, I got good-natured ribbing from the guys but it never felt malicious, more like I was among friends. I only heard malicious stuff from women who resented my pursuing a job that could be construed as earning a living.
My daughter who is 7 now, will NEVER hear that shit from me.
But, that said, if she's interested in geeky stuff, great. If not, then that's okay too.
JoAnn