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A Look at How Indian Women Have Persevered Through Several Obstacles To Contribute to the Open Source Community (factordaily.com)
A fascinating story of how Indian women have persevered through various roadblocks, including cultural, to actively contribute to the open source community. An excerpt from the story: As Vaishali Thakker, a 23-year old open source programmer looked over the hall filled with around 200 people, she didn't know how to react to what she had just heard. Thakker was one of the five women on the stage at PyCon India 2017, a conference on the use of the Python programming language, in New Delhi. The topic of the discussion was "Women in open source." As the women started discussing the open source projects they had been working on, the challenges and so on, someone from the audience got up and drew the attention of the gathering to the wi-fi hotspots in the hall. They were named "Shut the fk up" and "Feminism sucks." "It was right on our faces," remembers Thakker. For their part, the organisers were upset and even warned the audience. But the event had no code of conduct for anyone to really penalise or expel the culprits.
"It's disheartening when you're talking about the problem, someone is actually giving a proof that it (gender bias) indeed is a problem. In a way, I found it funny, because how stupid can you be to give the proof that the problem actually exists," says Thakker. And how. It's just been three years in her coding career but she is familiar with the high wall that gender stereotyping puts up in the world of software scripting. More so in her chosen field of coding. Thakker is among a small -- but fast-growing -- set of women coders from India shaping the future of several open source platforms globally including the Linux kernel, the core software program behind the world's biggest eponymous open source software.
"It's disheartening when you're talking about the problem, someone is actually giving a proof that it (gender bias) indeed is a problem. In a way, I found it funny, because how stupid can you be to give the proof that the problem actually exists," says Thakker. And how. It's just been three years in her coding career but she is familiar with the high wall that gender stereotyping puts up in the world of software scripting. More so in her chosen field of coding. Thakker is among a small -- but fast-growing -- set of women coders from India shaping the future of several open source platforms globally including the Linux kernel, the core software program behind the world's biggest eponymous open source software.
This one's got everything: Indians, women, feminism, Python, gender quotas. Oh boy am I sure looking forward to all the constructive discussions that will take place here!
and....I don't care.
Can they program? What kewl things did they hack?
This is not a dating site. This is a tech conference. Get with the program.
But I really couldn't give two shits what's between someone's legs when reading their code. The only bit that really matters is how good the code is.
Even if 10 or 20% of men are the culprits, I can see how that presents a significant barrier to all women wanting to enter the field. However, that's still "some men." When people claim the problem is "men," then I'd rather just tune out. The fact is, I don't behave like that, I'd speak out against that behavior if I saw it, but I just don't see it in the environments I frequent. Somehow I still get lumped in as part of the problem because I'm male. Whatever... I stopped listening when I was supposed to fix a problem I have zero control over.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
No, this "stuff" bothers me because these are supposed to be professionals at this conference.
Act like a professional, and show some tact.
Or it's just like the commenters who see someone reporting harassment and immediately bleat "that can't possibly be true" based on a few examples of people making false claims.
Well, the person described in this article was born a woman in India, so her experience might be a little different than your "12 Years A Nerd" experience as a male in America.
Ken
Sexism so prevalent that they had to outlaw revealing the gender of a baby before birth to avoid termination of female babies
Women getting burned alive, splashed with acid or murdered outright because their dowries were not big enough
Rape at the drop of the hat, many times gang rapes
Lower healthcare standards
Etc.
And they overcame all of this and achieved the ultimate goal...contributing to the Open Source Movement.
LOL!
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Feminism is cancer.
In certain cases it might be, just like chauvinism and any other standpoint taken to the extreme. In the end we should be treating all people with the same respect we would want for ourselves, no matter their biological, religious or cultural differences. Those who seek to make a negative example of someone's differences is not a very respectable person.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Yes and the Democratic Republic of North Korea is democratic. If feminism was about "equality of the sexes" then mission accomplished across the board. The movement and ideology is irrelevant in the western world. There is no end goal for feminism because it isn't about equality in opportunity or legality. It's about women supremacy and getting back at men for history which is why we see the BBC males taking pay cuts for no reason other than the long debunked gender pay gap myth and virtue signaling despite reports stating that there was no discrimination. Feminism is about equal outcomes which is contrary to meritocracy and why we see the bar lowered in many areas to get more women in. Feminism is about treating women different because being in the same room as men is oppressive. Lowering the bar, vengeful practices, and segregation is not equality!
Even you assume there are not educational and professional opportunities for women equal to men yet I haven't seen a single male only scholarship for STEM ( I bet you can't find one either) nor have I seen any male affirmative action in STEM. The favoritism is toward women so the institution can check their little quota box and feel smug about it and we see that with younger women making more and are preferred over men for STEM faculty. I have seen more opportunity for women these days than men. What are you talking about other than the outcomes you don't like?
Men and women are different so personal and social "equality" is code for "we want more because equality of outcome using bad measures". Using bad measures (gender pay gap) to promote bad policy (vindictive practices) and treating women different (lower standard and segregation) will never achieve "equality" in any true sense of the word. Forcing equal outcomes is the antithesis of a free society.
I agree but it just seems that 'feminism' has been soiled by too many extremists that it has lost all sense pragmatism or direction. There are places that absolutely need feminism and if western feminism tried to help those countries and those women I think many more would respect the movement and ideology. Instead of addressing real issues in the world we get diatribes about video games and movies.
Feminism may not be cancer but it is infected with a malignancy that, IMO, is terminal to any redeeming quality.
So, when John Smith, Paul Jones, and Vincent Miller contribute to an open source project, it's no big deal; when Sarah Brown contributes, having a feminine name is "trying to get attention" and polarizing and political
You missed the point if that is what you got out of my post.
If vmiller@, pjones@, jsmith@ or sbrown@ all submit patches, the only important thing is the content of the patch. If sbrown@ also includes a rant about how *SHE* struggles to get patches accepted because "BROGRAMMERS HATE MY GENITALS", she's going to get push back and is just an attention seeker looking to deflect what is probably very bad code (and even if it isn't, she's being a drama queen and thus toxic to the project's community).
This would be the same if vmiller@, pjones@ or jsmith@ launched into a tirade about "MALE ALLIES NEED TO DO MORE". They would be treated the same : toxic elements just trying to stir up controversy.
Even when there's gendered drama, the Gender of the troll inciting it doesn't matter.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Does TFA imply that it was the official hotspots? The impression I get from the summary suggests it was ad-hoc networks, as you suggest.
It's really sad how some guys feel so threatened by women wanting to write software. And I do mean sad, both for the women affected and for the guys who clearly have some pretty deep issues of their own.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The entire movement isn't rendered obsolete because several vocal sub-communities are taking extreme views. Any small community basically becomes more extreme in its views over time if it isn't exposed to reality. The problem is systemic in various causes ranging from feminism to atheism, various theisms (fundamental Christianity/Islam/Judaism/etc.), charitable organisations, environment-conscious groups, animal welfare (PETA), etc. This doesn't render any of the causes lost, it simply means they need to fight harder to drown out the voices of those more extreme sects.
You should never yield a movement because extreme people come in every so often. You also may want to reconsider automatic judgement of someone based on a particular view (such as a perceived gender pay gap) as in their case they might be right, even if they might be wrongly attempting to generalise.
They were at a conference. It's pretty hard to hide your gender when you meet people in person, face to face, or stand on a stage.
Your argument reminds me of the argument for wearing the burka. Don't complain about men's behaviour, just cover your body and avoid doing anything to make them horny like showing me then your eyes. If bad things happen it's your fault for not covering up enough and ramming your gender in men's faces.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC