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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?
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.
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.