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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?
Women make up 51 percent of the population, and because of this, Linux
should be banned in government. Operating Systems like Linux discriminate
against women because of a built in difficulty compared with Windows and
Apple's OS X.
Women pay taxes, and therefore shouldn't be discriminated against in
getting employment with government agencies. If these agencies had used
Windows or OS X, more women would be able to persue dreams of a full time
job in government. Linux is by its nature a man's domain. Women are
designed to use social interaction and emotions to deal with complex
tasks, things the command line are ill suited.
OS X, and Windows have
friendly and female-intuitive designs that take into account a woman's
understanding of objects,ie. folders, desktops, Clippy, the XP search dog.
These help women operate the computer by giving her a relationship with
these icons, and helpful animated pets. It makes a woman feel at home
with her computer by allowing her to relate to it.
Linux, on the other hand is designed for command line and programming.
Sure, it may have a fugly GUI to hide its true being, but to get any
serious work done you must know a bunch of archane commands with hundreds
of options that change with every command. Something like this: chmod
a+rwx. Only enginners can understand this. And most engineers are still
men. This puts the female population at a great disadvantage when
appliying for work. Men know this, and that's why they delibratly try to
install linux in the workplace.
How would womens groups react when they read the studies that are being
commissioned by industry on this very subject? Surely, women, when they
learn of this, will outvote men and ban linux from the government.
...or the rest of the male coders?
Apparantly I have to be female even to read the post... :(
Honestly though, I would love to see more women in my work place.
-Bill
..that's why they prefer KDE
me sexist? that's unpossible!
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
(ducks)
"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.
... then they just aren't. What's the big deal? If women largely aren't interested in programming, then they simply aren't. It's not like you can't write software without a balanced group of men and women.
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.
Is this sponsorship a creative way to get women interested in GNOME, or is it merely sexist?
/I'm sure we've all witnessed some truly creative sexist behavior in our lives. Hell it was probably 10% of college.
Are these two mutually exclusive for a reason? Just because it's creative doesn't mean its not sexist, and vice versa.
To be fair, college was far more sexist, but far less creative in execution....
I play a 16 year old girl on irc - does that count?
So who are the three males who won't be getting the scholarships because the money will go to three less qualified candidates?
I reach out to women all the time.
It's them letting me touch them that's the hard part.
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.
Right. I'm sure that there are occupations that are largely filled by women, not because men are incapable, but because, for whatever reason, men usually aren't interested. (How many junior high guys start a babysitting business, for example? The number might not be zero, but I'm sure it pales in comparison to the number of girls.)
Would it be good to have more women in science? Sure, if they're interested in doing it. If they aren't interested, then no, actually, it wouldn't be good. They should do what they have in their hearts to do, because that's what they'll excel at, and that's what they'll enjoy.
You have to remember that they are hiring women-only because everyone else is male. If there were 180 (or however many) women here and they tried to bring in some men, I think almost everyone would find it acceptable.
I think it's generally better to maintain some sort of gender balance than not to do so, just like I think it's better to support some sort of income/economic equality rather than having landed gentry with inherited fortunes and serfs. Of course, taking away some priveleges from the lords in my theoretical situation would be "classist," in a sense, but it would also be "good."
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
PINKER VS. SPELKE
A DEBATE
The above debate hosted at Edge is now a bit dated but it does a good job of looking at gender and science. Our patriarchical history in the west has given us science as envisioned by men like Sir Francis Bacon. It led to a reductionist deterministic heritage that we've only recently begun to break free of. Women in general in the west are only a century or more free of being chattles to be disposed of by their fathers. I hope we'll see women bring to science a different mind set and new insights.
just my loose change
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
I have *NEVER* met a male nursing student, and I know quite a few nursing students. Nobody gives a crap about that?
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Is GNOME Unique in its lack of female...popularity, for lack of a better word? I was under the impression that it was mainly because few girls major in computer science and the like; in that case, sponsorships don't make sense because it's part of a larger trend. Maybe, on the other hand, that's completely wrong, and the comp sci classes are FULL of girls, and they all hate GNOME. I doubt it, though. I would have seen these girls in class, probably.
"Just because you're eloquent doesn't mean you aren't a fucking crackpot." -Wavebreak
Can you imagine how bad it would smell if 188 geeks were in the same place?
Having a woman may convince 25% of them to take a shower.
Sadly those 25% are going to be the ones who already have the ability to get a girl, and they'd smell the best in the first place.
Why does everything have to be balanced? Obviously there shouldn't be extra barriers for one sex over the other, but I have a problem with the attitude that all professions need an equal amount of each sex. Do men that go into nursing get a preference because there's more women than men? (An honest question). There seems to be this hypothesis that bias can be eliminated by giving the group that's not equally represented a preference. But we seem to ignore the idea that the hypothesis has never really been shown to be true. I guess I believe in equal opportunities and equal treatment, but I don't believe in more than equal.
I've never been a big believer that bias can be cured by more bias. Affirmative action only leads to people thinking that a miss-represented group of people were only hired because of affirmative action. That kind of defeats the whole purpose. The article brings up issues like women not having same-sex role models. What I think the problem is that we feel the need to have to have a same sex role model. Why can't a Finnish woman look at Linus Torvalds as a role model? A woman from Finland probbably has more in common with him than me, a man born and raised in the US. If you ask me, that's the root of sexism. Trying to fix it with some patchwork of giving a few extra slots to women really won't do much of anything except maybe make some people at Gnome feel a bit better about themselves. If they want to do it, great, but don't try to tell me they're helping solve the problem, because they ain't.
AccountKiller
They'll get some girls to pose for the wallpapers right :)
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 is a difference between offering opportunities that encourage groups of people who are underrepresented in various fields, and being an *ist. As an example, there are plenty of scholarships out there aimed at encouraging/helping women get into the sciences. There are many more examples of such types of programs aimed at other groups, not just women. It has nothing to do with exclusion. Men are represented in fine numbers in IT, so I don't see what all the fuss is about.
Support a true independent artist - Leila Lopez
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.
Why do people (maybe just Americans) find it so hard to believe that there are things that women in general don't like. Men in general don't like getting hit in the groin: but if you do some Googling you'll see that there are a few guys who like it. Maybe women in general just don't like that sort of things. I see absolutely nothing wrong in that. Women are _not_ equal to men. If you believe in religion I believe no maintream religion shows women to be equal. If you believe purely in evolution, then you can most certainly see that men and women ae not equal. BUT I do believe that men and women are equivalent, and so have equal right, etc. They genders can be unequal but still equivalent...it's okay...no one will die.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Does anyone else see irony in an article where there is an apparent attempt to bring more women into the OSS community being tagged "Gnome, Chicks, Women"?
Oh, wait - I just reloaded the page and the "Chicks" tag is now gone!
Guess that means I'm not the only one who noticed...
Who says the ladies will be less qualified. For all you know it'll attract 3 superior candidates. *This* is one of the reasons many women don't want to work with the guys, silly comments like that (that also get modded insightful?!)
Oh, the desktop environment.
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.
Who says the ladies will be less qualified. For all you know it'll attract 3 superior candidates.
Indeed, the article says that everybody who *applied* was male. If the ~10:1 male:female ratio in CS holds true, then they could hire 18 women and still have them be equally qualified.
The problem, according to the fine summary, is that the women didn't apply.
This shows a complete understanding of *ism. People sometimes complain about "reverse" racism or sexist, but the problem is that they don't understand that it's not just about discrimination: yes, perhaps it is sex-based discrimination, but that does not make it sexist. Sexism or racism is discrimination in favor of a dominant power structure - in other words, if white have all the power and discriminate against non-whites, it's racist. If whites have all the power and someone creates a black television station, it's not. Encouraging people of underrepresented groups to participate is never *ism.
Just thought perhaps that should be cleared up.
a girlfriend of mine told me not to get involved with that little Gnome leprechaun, apparantly one drink, one rohypnol and she ended naked chained to a python with a hell of a VI headache in the morning, and the only thing he left in the room were a bunch of old 'getting the best out of visual basic 1.0' manuals... little rat b4stard.
-Magdalene --"there are 10 types of people in the world, those who read binary, and those who don't"
You would get some mod points if I had them, alas, they expired yesterday. Very insightful post.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
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!
There's nothing like an outdated stereotype... (from U.S. National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics, via here)
I would say the former. When you get a women far less interested than their representation in the field, its an indication that its quite likely that your existing visibility is skewed, and that you are missing exposure to a substantial portion of the talent pool.
I have some anecdotal evidence to support that claim. A (straight, male) friend of my brother tried to apply at a place such as you mention. This franchise hires almost exclusively women, and when he went in and asked for an application, they refused to even give him one. It is for this reason that I am boycotting this store. The next time I need some new undergarments, I will not go into Victoria's Secret. I suppose that it doesn't hurt them much, as I never shopped there anyway. Perhaps my actions will inspire others, where it might hurt their bottom line.
warning: This post is likely to contain gobs of dripping sarcasm. Consume at your own risk.
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.
I'm a woman, and the so's the person who got me into Linux in the first place. In fact, she manages a set of packages for Debian and is a sysadmin in a major educational institution. If you believe women aren't into Linux, you should take off your blinders.
What they really should have done to garner support is a swimsuit calendar featuring women coders.
/.'s, I'm sorry to both of you; it was a utilitarian jab I felt worth taking.
Just kidding! hahahah.
what they really should do is a swimsuit calendar with gorgeous models pretending to be women coders!
If I've offended female
ôó
Oh wow, I'm slow. Just took a look at the photo that comes before the linked one... same girls, NSFW
And I've read through a few of the comments posted here, and I think that many of you are misunderstanding programming as much as you're misunderstanding the ability of women in IT.
When I first started working professionally in IT I was an arse to men and women alike who didn't agree with me about matters of IT. In other fields I generally kept my mouth shut, but when it came to IT I was always right, even when I was demonstratedly wrong.
Over the years I've seen many people in IT who underestimated their own skills, who didn't think they could do tasks set out for them until they actually tried, and who realised later that maybe what they were afraid to do before wasn't so hard and gave them experience they could use in other areas.
When it comes to IT no assumptions should be made because IT is sexless, emotionless, and lacking in illogical thought. It is us, the people who use our computers, who project human characteristics onto our computers, and often show a glimmer of our own attitudes towards the opposite sex.
The best developers I've met and seen their work don't do this projection. Their computer is never a he or a she, it is a computer, simply a tool. They're not fazed by someone asking for a "feminine" colour to be put into a project if the colour scheme matches. They're not unwilling to take advice or constructive criticism from men or women if it is valid or helpful.
I used to be an arse to everyone who had a differing opinion, unsexist arrogance and obstinance were part and parcel of my ethos. I've grown up quite a bit, and I no longer automatically assume someone is a know-nothing jack-hole when they say they like Windows, or suggest an idea that seems questionable on the surface.
Women and men are different in a number of ways - women tend towards softness of aesthetics, comfortable styles, warm colours, quiet words and small clean messes, while men tend to be big and brash, hard lines, stark colours, loud words and louder anger, and dirty tidiness - and at the same time men and women are also alike - we all want to be respected for the knowledge we have, we don't like to be excluded just because we're short or tall or black or white or male or female, and we don't like to be stereo-typed and fitted into a box that supposedly tells the world what we are because those boxes are never quite the right size and shape.
If there is a lack of women in IT, so be it. There's a comparitive lack of men in nursing too.
I think it would be nice if we could just stop anthropomorphing our PC's into extensions of ourselves and realise that they're just a tool. Having a pink background or a picture of a blue skyline on the desktop doesn't automatically mean the owner is male or female.
If there are sexual characteristics in IT, programming is probably one of the most androgynous areas. It can be squiggly messes of bad code that puts out a rigid, stark interface, or it can be neat, tidy code that outputs a clean and tidy interface of warm colours and legibility, or it can be a blend of both.
We don't need more women in IT, or less men, what we need is more people with a sense of style and a willingness to ask other people "does this look good or not?"
Gay, lesbian, straight, bi, man, woman, or three-armed alien from Alpha Centauri doesn't matter. Style matters, willingness to learn matters, an ability to realise your mistakes and fix them matters.
It's nice that the people running the Gnome project are trying to encourage women to join in on the project, but I think it's a misplaced, though well-intentioned, effort on their part. The Gnome project, KDE, XFCE, Windows, and Mac OS X too, don't need more women, they need more people with style and the `nads stand up and say when something sucks.
As for the commenter who mentioned seeing the little diapered girl with the doll baby, I think you should have at least given the parent or parents a hard stare. No small child should be thinking about being a parent, they sho
Te Quiero, Puta!
I'm female, and I certainly haven't seen anything that was "not well-designed to reach women." I actually considered applying, but then decided against it.
:)
My reason is just that I don't have enough time. I'm on a co-op workterm as a full-time tools programmer at a small game company, so I can't easily devote myself to an open-source project. If I had the time to spare, however, I'd be all over the Summer of Code. It sounds like a lot of fun
How are you going to encourage men to enter into crappy paying female dominated jobs? What could possibly entice someone to spend 1 or 2 years in school to make $8/hr as a secretary, with no benefits? The female dominated jobs that pay well, nursing, for example, are seeing an increase in the number of men getting into the field. How is this hypocracy? I think it's great they are seeking greater diversity, it can only benefit them in the long run.
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?
As even the most basic scholar of Disney can tell you, there's almost always a ratio of one woman to every seven gnomes.
Of course, Smurfologists would argue the situation's even worse. No wonder the little buggers are blue.
> You would get some mod points if I had them, alas, they expired yesterday. Very insightful post.
We need a plan to help people who don't have mod points!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Four days ago, after a problem in windows, A virus all over the partitions, I persuade my sister to replace her system with a GNU/Linux distro, Kubuntu. She told me, if I want to do this she wants her windows too because she don't want to ask me every time she want to to something and she knows windows well. I told her that the gnu systems are changing so fast and her new experience wont be like the previous ones and for bonus I will teach her 1 hour of how to operate her regular tasks in this system. I knew she didn't like the terminal experiences from the past
:).
I have and idea this time. I strongly resist to open a terminal while she was watching, and never ever let her see what i am doing there and did all my favorite terminal based task for her system remotely from my own system. And with an hour of teaching she started to play with the system and found many interesting features herself and is really impressed with it. This time with no fear from that black page, maybe she like it and will stay with it!.
It seems she liked it when there is no terminal around any more.
It's time to stop pretending that there are wonderful abstract principles at stake when people try programs like this: it's a bit like passionate cries of 'racist!' every time anyone attempts to do anything to rectify the grossly asymmetrical situation of many U.S. born blacks. Computing has been a quite sexist discipline for many years, even if the situation has changed for the better recently. As a result, there's a pretty steep shortage of senior women in most CS faculties that I've ever seen.
As a undergraduate, in 1990-1993, in addition to hearing tales of acts of substantial sexual harassment that went largely unpunished, I also got to see first hand a lot of horny nerds 'helping' the women in their classes by basically attempting to do all their work for them, as well as a few tutors spending an inordinate amount of time trying to score with students rather than teach them. While the situation has improved, the environment of 10 years ago influences the current supply of women with (for example) 12 years of experience.
So can the 'sexist' talk. Go read Stanley Fish's 'The Trouble With Principle' and see if you can still keep a straight face while pushing your abstract principles...
Personally, I suspect that the absence of women from projects like GNOME represents good sense, more than anything else. I have met many incredibly intelligent, hardworking and successful women in serious academic 'systems' research (there seem to be a number in compiler research, for some reason), but far fewer in the sort of hobbyist open source sphere. Perhaps they prefer to be formally recognized and paid properly - if you felt that there was the prospect of lingering sexism in a field, one might prefer a area where there's a solid audit trail for success (e.g. 'why did you hire a man with half the number of first-rate publications as me?') as opposed to the rather nebulous world of success in the open source world (e.g. 'I wonder why other developers didn't flock to my project?').
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.
The tunnel vision is the ignorance of social stigma and associated fear. Typically such programs don't reward mediocre candidates, they identify talented candidates and try to recruit them. For example a colleague of mine was originally working to become a veterinarian (a job more socially accomodating to women), but was recruited into ChemE (and had a 4.0 GPA). She was not a mediocre candidate, what she was looking for was an environment with social support, and encouragement.
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?
As others have pointed out there are similar programs for the recruitment of men into traditional female occupations such as nursing.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
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?
"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?"
The University of Washington was considering incentives to draw more men into teaching recently - last year or the year before that - but withdrew the plan when certain groups protested the idea.
It is left as an exercise for the reader to figure out which groups those were (hint: the obvious ones).
#DeleteChrome
In Australia last year a proposal was put forward by a privately funded trust to offer six scholarships to men who would be willing to become primary school teachers in an effort to address the well known and widely acknowledged gender imbalance in schools.
Predictably, the feminazis kicked up a storm declaring it to be all manner of evil and sexist until a compromise was reached. The organisation was forced to offer half the scholarships to women.
Yes that is right, a program that was intended to increase the numbers of men in primary schools was virtually forced to subsidise the entry of more women into the field.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
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.
It hurts to do this.
;)
It is important to have a clear view on the world, yes? Unless we risk going into roadblocks here and there, and feel sore and numb after a while
Using our mind can certainly help understanding and put things in perspective. However, too much of it, and we tend to get stuck in our own mind, instead of seeing things as they really are. With too much disturbing thoughts and emotions, we are only seeing our own mind, not the world around us.
In the news, there is lots of statistics every week, but we also know the world is much larger than a written report on it.
What do we really know about a person we have never met? Suddenly, we are to start to believe the statistics, to describe a person standing next to us?
That is discrimination, and the root of both that and racism. It's a trap in our mind, to be stuck in such superficial judgements.
Nobody has 1.2 kids, or 0.4 cars. It is impossible or silly. Reality is much more diverse than statistics and our crude models of the world.
To include groups and genders of people that would otherwise not join/enroll, is judged as a good thing for the whole. Because it creates opportunities for those people, _and_ shows others from the same group that it is indeed possible and they will not be alone. It is an effort to get the ball rolling, to include everyone, so that we will realize that we are all really the same.
Sure, black people usually run faster that white people in the Games, and white people dominate swimming. However for individuals, the statistical differences are negligible, and having a diversity of people in every social setting, far outweights the benefits of monoculture and speciality-breeding.
You give people an opportunity, and they will shine.
Everything that can unity us more is a good thing. You can be sure that whatever idea you have, if it will bring everybody more together, it is a good one.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Thanks, Slashdot, for getting to the 21st century and updating the GNOME icon. =)
As for the topic... um, I have nothing against the idea, and it's a pretty good one. Just be careful not to hire Paula, who's undoubtedly out of work right now. =)
No, the problem is that people see it as a problem. Is there some evidence that there are vast (or even small) numbers of women that secretly wanted to compete, but were intimidated by the alleged all male nature of coding? Or have you personally decided that it was unacceptable? Maybe they are not interested? Maybe you should leave them alone. Maybe they have better things do do during the summer.
By all means make sure that the program was advertised sufficiently to women, but don't treat them as needing special discrimination so as to be able to have the ability to participate.
I have worked with many women colleagues during 10 years of employment in the software industry, and 4 years of compsci at university. Some were excellent, some were good and some were not. Same as for men. The main problem is with people who are not interested. I don't see discriminatory schemes as doing anything other than increasing that problem.
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.
In my undergraduate mathematics degree, there was just about a 50% split between men and women, and this continued throughout the duration of the course, roughly speaking. However, in the very same university, the proportion of women doing postgraduate research or learning, in the mathematics department, is only about 25%, if that. That's a big drop off.
You say the drop off is probably a result of the females in the class simply not being interested. I was in that class, and people's level of interest was totally unrelated to their gender. On top of that, the proportion of females in that very same course 10 or even 20 years ago was probably less than 10%, if there were any at all? Is it the case that somehow the female population spontaniously became more interested in mathematics in the intervening years?
The answer is probably; yes, they did become more interested. But not from some "innate" mathematical ability somehow emerging in one generation. Rather, it was as a result of changing social mores and expectations. In the 1950's, if a girl had said that she even liked mathematics, let alone wished to study it, the reaction would have been surprise and bemusment at best, and outrage and ridicule at worst. Today, such a girl is just about in the same boat as any boy who expresses an interest in mathematics.
Girls are told, from numerous sources, that "Girl's just don't do science." The message may never be overtly stated, but the irrefutable fact of its presence is a miasma that chokes the desire for science out of young girls. In the same way that someone can be encouraged to enter science via science fairs, presentations, practical work, etc; so too can someone be discouraged from entering science via uneasy support, social mores, outright skepticism, etc.
May the Maths Be with you!
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.
I'm not sure I agree. In the UK education system, one chooses GCSEs at age 13/14. The number of science GCSEs (1, 2 or 3) you choose will control what A-levels (chosen age 15/16) you select (i.e. unless you did 2 or 3 science GCSEs you will have a lot of difficulty). And the A-levels you select will dictate what subjects you can do at university (i.e. it would be hard to get into CS without an a-level in maths, hard to get into engineering without an a-level in physics....).
If we're letting 13 year old kids (or even 15 year old kids) choose what they want to do for the rest of their lives, you can bet peer pressure is going to come into play.
I am reminded of something I read in an article some time ago. One year a group of school children were taken on a tour of a hospital. At the end of the tour, all the boys were given doctors' hats and all the girls were given nurses' hats. The parents complained to the hospital; why were the girls given hats corresponding to lower-paid, lower status jobs? The hospital promised to do things differently the next year. A year later the group toured the hospital again and, once again, the girls came home with nurses' hats and the boys with doctors' hats. The parents complained again. "We did things completely differently this year" the hospital said; "last year we gave all the girls nurses' hats and all the boys doctors' hats. This year we asked them what hat they wanted, and gave them that."
Anyway, here's my point: Demanding specialisation at a time when peer pressure is rife is an example of a social structure that could believably be keeping women away from the sciences.
Personally I think biology also plays a part, but I think it's short-sighted to discount the effects of society all together.
Just my $0.02,
Michael
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
I refer you back to my original set of questions for you; the ones questioning your character flaws and motivations for such irrationality.
How many young girls never get into computers, because parents and teachers never even think that a girl might be interested in programming? How much interest does a boy have to show in computing to get offered by an adult to teach him more about computers? How many girls have shown even more interest, only to be turned away? How many girls don't even let their own interests show for fear of just being scoffed at by adults ("oh, that silly girl thinks she's going to become a computer scientist!"), or by friends, ("eww, why do you want to use a computer? you don't want to be a dork, do you?").
You also act like somehow children have a fully-developed sense of self and ego, and full command over their lives--as though it's their fault for not achieving their fullest potential, even when the odds are stacked against them. How many young adult women in high school and college never enter into technology courses at all, because that spark that once flickered in their youth was doused instead of nurtured?
But, once again, you show your willful ignorance, and promote a notion that is easily shown as irrational. For what you suggest to be true, you'd have to take as given that the social structures which affect us cannot work against us, cannot hinder our growth, and cannot affect different groups and classes in society differently.
Answer my question, why do you feel compelled to promote something so horrendously irrational, and worse, something that actively works against achieving any real progress in society? Why is it that you don't put any effort into making sure your notions fit with reality? What, exactly, is your defect?
My guess is that you tend to latch onto the first idea that fits a problem requiring the least amount of change on your part. Women are underrepresented in the technology fields? "They're just too stupid^W^W not technologically inclined." Girls aren't given the same quality of opportunities as boys? "They just need to take the initiative."
Do you notice how your responses assume, without evidence and therefore without logic or reason, that there is nothing unjust with the status quo? What are the odds, do you suppose, that somehow the current state of affairs happens to be exactly ideal? Do you notice how, if things aren't fair (a possibility you must grant, if you are at all honest about the extent to which you can rationally judge the situation), that you are blaming the victim? How can you stand to be so intellectually dishonest and socially destructive?
In other words, you are saying people are fully rational, without an ounce of subjectivity.
How many parents, do you suppose, buy dolls for their little girls, and electronic toys for their little boys? How many teachers recognize technological curiosity in boys and nurture it, while seen the same tendencies in girls as unrealistic or as quaint little phases? How many bosses and managers see the dorky-looking man as a competent engineer, but the dorky-looking woman as kinda ugly and maybe they'd rather not work with her?
Are these people all irrational and/or outright ignorant morons? Absolutely. Does that mean they therefore don't exist, and thus their negative influences need not be counteracted? Of course not!
Male or female, geeks and nerds will be geeks and nerds. I think they need to bring in real outsiders to the project. Get some insight on what Joe Sixpack wants, or grab a panel of Mac users and ask them how GNOME should be. Things will never work if they're only designed by engineers, male OR female.
I may be nitpicking but I didn't read a single comment stating that women are unable to program. There are, in fact humorous comments about dating (missed the lesbian cunnilingus joke though) but in general I would say that most male developers do not consider the present situation as a good one and wonder (because they know there isn't a thing as genetical predisposition to computer science) why, oh why ?
And the people one finds in IT doesn't explain it all. There are more women in the Navy than in CS schools... I even think that despite their lack of women (or maybe because of it), IT departments tend to be the less sexists in most companies
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
...and your reference is?
9 D-879D-1D06-8E49809EC588EEDF
There is such research, of course, and it mostly falls into a few broad categories:
- Gender "science". Gender science presupposes biological factors are irrelevant as a matter of doctrine.
- Sociology of various stripes. Rarely uses biological controls of any kind. No standardized or generally accepted methodology exists.
In short, the research you are referring to is pretty close to worthless. It is also often obviously driven by a certain (egalitarian)utopian ideological mindset, that is aggressively intolerant of any dissent from the party line whatsoever.
Unfortunately for these "sciences", real science in the biological fields is constantly pushing back the veil of ignorance that psuedoscience has been hiding behind. There is a plentora of articles discussing the phonomena - here is one:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00018E
This is a specious argument, and the burden of proof is on you. You need to demonstrate that there is a significant percentage of women who meet the criteria you've lain out, not call on others to refute the possibility. Your argument amounts to little more than "Isn't it possible that women don't have the same opportunities, etc?"
Your statements call into question the possibility of an injustice. You need to demonstrate an actual injustice before considerable monies and social programs are used to try and correct this perceived problem. You need to show that women have inadequate opportunity in IT/CS, and that it is desirable for them to have comparatively better resources (or at least more specialized resources). That is to say, that women will take advantage of these opportunities to the extent that it is worth the money.
So, basically, I refuse to argue this on your terms. However, I do think that the high percentage of men in IT compared to women is more a result of a difference between the sexes than it is a lack of educational opportunities. I have purely anecdotal evidence to back this up, but of all the humans I know (and I know quite a few), women just have different interests and tendencies towards technology than men... in general.
When a taboo is present, the watchers of the taboo take any sign of questioning as heresy. They (correctly) anticipate that people who in any way question the taboo, while not directly challenging it, are most likely attempting to shield themselves from reprisal. This in turn leads to the taboo watchers acting in a very touchy fashion. Game theory.
In short: (Taboo -> People cloak their opinions - > Taboo guardians have to be more sensitive in order to penetrate the cloaking efforts of dissenters - > and so on)
As a female in the IT/CS world, it's not that there aren't women and it's not that GNOME excluded women; they just didn't reach women with their advertising for the positions. That's all, they just need to talk to their marketing department and say "hey, we need to reach out to this untapped talent" and then it's done. And it sounds like that's what they are doing.
As for the nursing issue, I think we don't know much about their outreach to men because, well, none of us are really interested in becoming nurses. I don't know about the rest of you, but I became an IT person because I prefer Computers to people. Not a good trait in a nurse.
"Just call me Girly Blank"
I believe the logic behind the assumption that the three women will be less qualified is not gender-specific. At least, MY logic behind arriving at the same assumption isn't. See, the problem is as follows:
Step 1: Gather a large quantity of candidates.
Step 2: Select the best however many out of them, which wind up being the top 10% (or 5%, or 1%, or whatever).
Step 3: Bring in three that were NOT the best Whatever% of their group, because they are the ONLY in their group
Step 4: Profit!
Selecting the best out of a large group means you've got a strong chance of actually having very good ones. Bringing in three who were not obtained via a screening-out process, who were not better than 90% (or 95%, or 99%, or 100-whatever%), results in unknown quality (given the data presented here), and most likely average quality.
The same principle applies whether you're displacing 3 merit-selected male coders with 3 gender-selected female coders, 3 white merit-selected college applicants with 3 black race-selected college applicants (ooh, I'll get modded troll for that), 3 survey-selected coffee blends with 3 charity-supporting coffee blends, or 3 successful national chain restaurants for 3 local eateries. You can safely assume that the replacements in all of those cases are not as good as the "best" ones they replace, until you see actual individual qualifications.
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
Let me get my point out of the way so everyone in a hurry can move on - girls don't like coding competitions. They like coding. They are competitive. But competitive Linux programming? I dont think so.
So what do girls like?
Well, over here in Blighty, there are loads of lovely male nurses, but not so many female CS graduates. I'm one of the few - doctored and an ex-CS Lecturer - and can report that undergraduate CS programmes aren't designed with girls' minds in mind There aren't enough women involved in course design and it looks like this is going to remain the case for some time.
No matter. Snuggle up. I want to talk to you about evolution, the birds and the bees.
We girls are wired differently (you knew that already). There are whole sections of our brains dedicated to spotting men who'll make good fathers for our children. Other bits are reserved for looking good/ hair and shoes and stuff. And then there's the house and social life to organise. Load this up with all the modern aspirations (sporty car, career, good salary, pets, sports, hobbies, exotic travel, etc). Phew!! No room left in there for competitive programming! :)
Amongst our social brain soup however, women have a long tradition of coding and have been designing, sharing and modifying domestic codes (weaving/ knitting/ stitching patterns, recipes etc) for hundreds of years. With these, then hard-wired, code-based traditions in mind Ada Lovelace conceived the first computer programming language. We've still got the wiring, and technology has reached a point where we've now also got the motivation.
Lots of women are naturally good at many of the things directly relevant to the evolution of Web 2.0 (I'm sorry, I hate the term too).
In addition:
And so, finally back to Gnome's competitive programming.
There are girls who understand and use the computer coding systems/ the languages and rules. Generally-speaking, though, girls don't have that need to be admired as programmers.
We're wired to seek out good fathers for our children, both biological and technological.
Dr_Bliss xxx
While your parents encouraged you to be more well-rounded by going outside, I bet they never indicated to you that you shouldn't be interested at all in computers, by putting the "family" computer in your brother's room as if you'd never need to use it and ignoring your requests for more opportunities to learn about computers. There's still parents that do this to girls, and even parents who try to be equal can inadvertantly overlook their daughters' computer interests because of stereotypes. Also, I bet you never had to walk into a computer classroom where you were the only one that was *different*. In college, one class I took had three girls and the guys made a huge fuss over this ("OMG, I didn't know there were 3 girls in the school!"). It's not hard, as the only girl in class after class, to get teh impression that you just don't belong. It's very lonely as well.
It's not that women need step-by-step hand holding the entire way, it's that it would be nice to have *some* encouragement, to know that not everyone expects you stop playing with computers and go do something more girly, or even to know that computer science is even an *option* for women.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
I have a CS degree. I am female. I've been in the industry for 25 years. When I 1st started out there were not many women and there still aren't. Back in the 80's there was a push to make us feel welcome. But when you're the only girl in the organization it IS tough. I'd say for the majority of those 25 years the male:female ratio has been like 10:1. I will also step up and say those guys were not all (or even mostly) socially inept nerds.
... his reply: his wife. And that was the breaking point for me returning to "programming". As a woman I wanted a life outside the office. I'm not saying all men don't or that all women do. But it sure made a differnce to me.
When I had my children I had to get 4 levels of (male) management approval to take a leave of absence. 4!!. At 1 point I asked 1 of these males "who takes care of your kids"
IMHO: women don't generally feel welcome and we want to have a life. Fixing it is tougher than offering 3 female only opportunities.
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
The idea that men and women on average interact with each other differently, and build social networks differently, and maybe even think and problem-solve differently, whether as a result of biology or social conditioning, ought to be pretty plainly obvious to anyone who's worked in a mixed environment for any length of time. However, the current climate discourages consideration of such factors to an almost comically ridiculous extent.
People are so afraid of ostracism, that they deny what almost anyone, male or female, knows is probably true: at the heart of most stereotypes is a small kernel of truth.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I think an important point that is being missed here is that for OSS projects developers are both producers and consumers, so trying to get involvement can equally be seen as an effort to attract consumers.
I think this is the only argument I've heard so far in this thread that offers a convincing justification for the forced-diversification of a workforce.
If your goal is to create product which is going to appeal to a broad spectrum of users, and a lot of those users happen to be female, then it might make sense to have some women on board when you're making the product. (Assuming that the needs or preferences of women is different than the needs or preferences of men with regards to an operating system, and that a group of men would not adequately cater to the female component of the audience/market, both of which are debatable.)
It seems as though we've decided -- or academia and political correctness have decided for us -- that "diversity is a Good Thing," but there's rarely ever any discussion on why this is the case. Honestly, I don't think it's always self-evident or obvious, or even universally true.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
We discussed this at length in a class I had at college a while back, it was supposed to be an english class but it mostly ended up being a bunch of us debating "the issues". Our general conclusion was that the people who have people affirmatively stuffed into a job position (or class, or...) are the ones who benefit the most because they're exposed to people that they normally wouldn't encounter. This is most significant in school, before people become habitual bigots.
Forcibly (heh) putting women into technical jobs will benefit them, yes, but they will benefit the rest of us more, not least because actually being in the presence of the opposite gender occasionally is helpful to one's chances of pairing up with one :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Let me offer a counter-example. I'm an aerospace engineer. Why? When I was little, my parents always encouraged me to go into engineering. Sure, when it was time to go and make the choice, it was my decision, but would I have made the same decision if my parents hadn't encouraged me? Maybe not.
The point is, it's quite stupid to pretend that your wants and desires and passions aren't shaped by the external world. Especially in your early life, most of your desires are the result of external influences. The simple fact is that the external influences on girls are quite different than the external influences on boys, often for very innocent reasons.
I agree with you on one point: that women aren't being actively kept out of computer science or engineering, but are choosing to not follow opportunities in those fields. However, I don't think its acceptable to just leave it at that. We have to figure out why exactly that is the case, and what we can do to fix the problem. We have to figure out the root cause. I think the root cause is social. It may be that the root cause is biological. However, unless we do something to find out, we'll never know.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I'm not sure about it. I am a woman and that's exactly why I started programming twenty years ago and why I am still enjoying it today. If I have been a man, I'm not sure I will still have the same pleasure of doing it. As I see male computing professionals around me, I guess I would have quickly wished to leave the keyboard to others and become more of a planner. I don't care much about planning, I much prefer coding. I really love telling my machine what to do. But I have never met a girl enjoying it as I do, so I feel lonely. However, I have met quite a few women interested in learning the skills but mostly through women organizations and mostly for practical purposes, not just for fun. As for video games, if they represent for me a totally alien universe, my daughter is very good at them.
While I feel that you do have a valid point, hiring someone merely to balance out a gender ratio is in and of itself sexist.
How do you think a fully competent man would feel knowing he didn't get the job just because an incompetent woman got the job over him just because she's a woman?
Throughout high school, I was part of a program called YTE (Youth Tech Entrepreneurs). While a part of this program, I was often outnumbered by females, who were all very much encouraged to explore their curiosities when it came to technology. I managed a Web development team while a part of YTE. Approximately half of that team was female, and they were all very talented, often times exceeding me when it came to technical prowess. Not everywhere will you find these preconceived notions of female "inferiority" when it comes to tech. Please keep that in mind.
Have you driven a fnord... lately?
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Almost certainly outraged. How do you think a fully competent woman would feel knowing she didn't get the job just because an incompetent man got the job over her just because he's a man?
The point here, is, that the question is raised as to whether the latter is a significant problem. Both assuredly exist. You raise the question if the former is a significant problem. I don't believe it is, but if it is I agree fully that something must be done about it.
It doesn't have to happen everywhere to be a problem, it just has to happen enough. There's always going to be some imbalances and injustices no matter what you do, but at some point the signal becomes stronger than the noise. Given the extreme disparity between men and women in IT/programming/etc, it's certainly warranted to look into it, no?
Your High School YTE highlights this. If girls outnumber boys in it, what happens between there and their entry into the workforce? It raises another possibility: perhaps the disparity we are seeing today is a result of sexism of the past (60s, 70s, 80s), and as sexism is further decreasing throughout the 90s and 00s, we'll see a marked improvement throughout the 10s and 20s? I really do not know, but it's definitely worth looking into.