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Tackling Open Source's Gender Issues
angry tapir writes "Women's participation in open source development is at a far lower level than women's participation in proprietary software development. One of the groups that aims to change this is the Ada Initiative: A non-profit organization formed last year. I recently caught up with its two founders, Linux kernel developer Valerie Aurora and comp sci PhD student Mary Gardiner, to discuss the project."
Good luck trying to find a woman that doesn't care about money.
And if you do, please tell her that I'm looking for a new wife to help me support my first two.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Good luck trying to find a woman that doesn't care about money.
Hah! That's easy! Just find a woman with a rich husband.
[ducks]
That's quite a stereotype you've got there...
For geek misogynism to explain the gender disparity in software in general or open source in particular, it does have to be the worst. Because the gender disparity in software is more than in advertising, more than in sales, more than in almost any occupation you can think of that's full of loudmouth sexists:
Software engineers: 20.6% women
Computer programmers: 22.4% women
Computer scientists and systems analysts: 30.4% women
Computer support specialists: 27.1% women
Database administrators: 32.2% women
Network and computer systems administrators: 17.2% women
Network systems and data communications analysts: 23.2% women
Compare:
Bailiffs, correctional officers, jailers: 26.9% women
Sports reporters: 38.8% women
Advertising sales agents: 45.3% women
Marketing and sales managers: 43.1% women
Lawyers: 35.0% women
There are professions with fewer women -- e.g. tv and radio announcers, 18% women. And many of the construction trades are near zero. Truckers, very low. But still, it strains credulity that a bunch of geeks could drive women out of a field through sheer obnoxiousness, when salespeople, advertising people, sports reporters, and lawyers couldn't.