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."

Comments

Re:This again?

[Hatta]

I see no reason to think there's a gender-related basis for programming... do you?

Given the physical differences between male and female brains, I see no reason not to think that there's a gender related basis for programming.

"Differences in interest" sounds like a nice way of saying "girls like dolls, boys like guns." There is no particular biological basis for this

But, there is. Raise a biologically male child to play with dolls and he'll make them fight. Raise a biologically female child to play with action figures, and she'll play house with them.

This experiment has been done, and the results are in. Male psychology is different from female psychology for reasons that are unrelated to nurture. That leaves nature. The fact that we haven't pinpointed the exact brain structures that cause the difference is only due to our lack of understanding of the brain at this time.

Or, to put this another way... what you are claiming here is equivalent to claiming that transexuals have a choice.