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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!
Feminism is one thing, but some women push so hard that they sometimes get over the theoretical 50-50 mark and that's why men are pissed off.
Feminism is about equality, not less rights for men. Don't condemn us because the previous generations were machos.
ad. Repeat after me until you get it through your thick skulls:
Females and males are not identical. This is not bad.
Females and males are not identical. This is not bad.
Females and males are not identical. This is not bad.
Do all open source developers have the maturity of two year-olds? It would appear so from the wifi hijinks at the conference.
That is all.
Repeat after me until you get it through your thick skulls: You are a tosser
You are a tosser
You are a tosser
You are a tosser
You are a tosser
You are a tosser
You are a tosser
Eh?
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 is the proof that YOU are creating the problem.
I got no problem working with women on a daily base in my IT-job because they shut up (as men) and just do the job and they get equally paid.
I don't question the quality of a git based on the name (and supposed gender) of the owner.
It's just like that 16yr old prodigy that turned out to be a fraud and then started screeching that people were harassing her. It's almost like there's this gigantic clusterfuck of people who are nobodies and trying to get their 11.8 minutes of fame by cashing in on the latest "look at all these people harassing me..."
Om, nomnomnom...
I wonder if she encounters more prejudice as a result of her gender, her ethnicity, or her choice of language. My guess would be choice of language...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You are a tosser ...
You are a tosser
...is to stop talking about gender and "gendered" issues as if they are not just created by this polarizing talk of gender all the time. Gender doesn't matter. Only code does. No one online knows you're a man, woman, brown, red, purple, with 1 leg or a missing eye until you bring it up.
Let's face it, "Women in Open Source" as a talk is like a magnet to anyone looking to troll you and just get a rise out of you. Same as bringing in any other physical carateristics you have. People just perceive it as you trying to get attention, and the people who are more apt at giving you attention won't give you the positive kind.
If you send a patch to a Open source projet with your e-mail being vthakker@something.com, no one can even tell if you're a man or woman unless you bring it up.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
including the Linux kernel, the core software program behind the world's biggest eponymous open source software.
What open source software, aside from possibly Linux, a mashup of the original developer's name (LINus) and the thing he was trying to recreate (UniX), is named after it's original author?
Is there a Mr. Containers? Ms. Drupal? Mrs. Apache? I've scan the list of books at O'Reilly and none jumps out as being named after their creator, the defining requirement for considering something as eponymous last I checked.
Ken
(/- - - Watches video in silence, eyes glued to the screen; turns around, clears throat - - -/)
"No, I am absolutely, positively sure, that that person is NOT Linus."
Is this proof of gender bias globally or a localized gender bias in India?
Also let's not lose sight of the fact that the conference room at a programming conference in India was full of men (presumably) listening to five women talk about the struggles women programmers face in open source projects.
I contend the issue may not be as wide-spread as some would have you believe, the packed conference room points to a general sensitivity/openness to the issue.
Ken
I recall being in a car (back in india) where the wife of my friend, who I had mostly respected, a staunch feminist, was in a discussion with my friend, her spouse. A short while into the discussion, see grabbed an apply my friend was eating and threw it out the window, "focus on me when I am talking" she said. I thought it was odd but hey, I will just shut up, nonetheless it stuck in my head. Few years later, they did end up having a divorce when this incident just popped in my thoughts. The whole process was bit of a feminist from hell. A bunch of feminist organizations backed her up initially, until they realized she was abusing the rights they had fought for every women, as an example, she falsely accused the family of this individual of demanding dowry. A severe crime in India, this is the only crime where legally, "you are guilty and must prove your innocence". It finally all settled after she has extorted a lot of dough from her in-laws and husband.
This lady did a lot of harm to feminism. Only silver lining, when the dust settled she was not welcomed at a lot of these organizations, nonetheless all those who witnessed had a mental stereotype of a feminist. It took few years for me to evaluate that my sole example was actually a bad person and this is not what feminism stands for.
Wow. Instant Gratification.
I don't bother doing much more than kicking my patches over the wall to these major open source projects because I'm pretty sick of dealing with a mix of bros, omegas, and MRAs. It's pretty sad when bros are the nicest guys on the list. All three will date rape you and argue about the justifications afterwards.
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."
200 (mostly?) men fill a conference room to hear five women talk about "Women in open source".
I suspect the hall was filled because it was the only session that guaranteed there would at least be women presenting, if not attending.
Ken
If the females in India — where the society is, if anything, only more "patriarchal" than in the US, with the sex disparity growing — are achieving such results, then whatever is holding American ones back, can not be "patriarchy".
On that matter, the statistics among in chess offers a similar proof — the far more "patriarchal" societies of Eastern Europe and China, where women are still expected to look pretty and cook dinner — have many more prominent female players than the US does...
Whether the Feminism and the endless dollars spent on "womyn studies" in various colleges are to actually be blamed, these endeavors certainly have not helped matters.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
... this is infantilism and/or bullying.
Given, gender/sex is the vector by which it is put in effect, but stuff like this shouldn't even be discussed. Find the hotpotters, kick them out, no reimbursement, if they raise a stink, call the police and press charges.
This isn't generic sexism, it's beyond that IMHO. I also think it's a problem if we slap the term sexism on to *everything*, like a 55 year old billionaire grabbing the crotch of a woman. It dilutes the term and causes it to lose any useful meaning.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Is not having an internet connection
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 does suck ... and IYF femi-nazi bitches need to STFU! A true for India as it is for progressive /. droolers. What's the issue ?
Good to see that thereâ(TM)s actually an army of passionate female Indian data entry volunteers.
I was gonna start an open source project and was thinking who is gonna do all the data entry. Looks like the Open Source model could be sustainable after all!
This is truly inspirational!
Sorry mates, looks like all the Open source jobs are going to the India sweatshops now.
Why stop at females? Soon we will have child labour.
Imagine 6 yr olds locked in a dimly lit, dirty, poorly ventilated computer room for 16 hours a day churning out open sourced libraries and kernel patches.
Yeah theyâ(TM)re gonna take away all our jobs!
Isn't one of the arguments FOR open source development model vs proprietary is that gender doesn't matter? Location doesn't matter? Age doesn't matter? So at what point did all that start mattering?
The article deliberately blurs the distinction between attacking women and attacking feminism. A wifi network entitled "Feminism sucks" is the latter.
Feminism is an ideology that promotes gendered hatred, discrimination, and bigotry. It calls for employers to bias their selection toward female candidates, give preferential treatment to female employees, and have special procedures to punish men who are accused of stepping out of line. It blames all the ills of the world on men and "patriarchy", inventing a monstrous history of male humanity to justify their prejudice towards present-day men, who are presumed to have inherited some original male sin.
Given the striking parallels - particularly discrimination against a group that is over-represented in high-status professions like programming - the article is closely equivalent to deriding a statement that "Nazism sucks" as clear evidence of systematic prejudice against Aryans.
Many are getting sick of your bulling shit and it's not the women you're going to have to worry about. It's easy to pick on girls when you're a punk.
If women wants to be recognized in coding community thy need to bring code, complying about bullshit will not accomplish nothing except further aliening them more, people that compiling a lot are narcissists with not talent that want to be accepted for no fucking reason.
I'm not saying it's all good and sexism is over, but this is being characterized as flamebait by a lot of comments, and it repeatedly contains things like:
“Biases are there because at many places some people feel women aren’t good enough to code. But I haven’t encountered any such bias because the Linux kernel community is really good,” she adds.
And this woman stating directly that having a baby was a bigger barrier than any of her male counterparts, but her modern office in India was very accommodating:
“Sometimes I feel, when they (women) are in this field they are more aggressive because they want to prove that they are as good as their male counterparts,” she says, adding she has not faced gender bias at work yet.
“I don’t have any complaints. I feel girls are not short on talent, it’s just that they have to stick around. Sometimes it becomes difficult if you have a maternity leave, you’re disconnected for six months from everything and you cannot complain about it because the child needs you,” she says.
How did she cope? “I took my child to office with me, and my office supported that,” Deshpande-Dalal says.
Those parts quoted in the article certainly exist and are important, but you know, RTFA.
Look, if it upsets you that much, post your address and Iâ(TM)ll be glad to mail you a hanky. A nice pink one to go with your politics.
give me a break with this nonsense.
did those indian 'white supermacist alt-right males' come up and take of your hajibis and touch your hair, as well?
lol victim culture.
'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."'
India with its caste system is like a feudal society from the dark ages. Before we discuss women in open source, how about we first address the problem with the Dalit (the Untouchables) - how many Dalit are involved in software development?
Repeat after me..
and you're a catcher
And you're a catcher
And you're a catcher
The thing is gender bias works both ways. Some might see a talk on "women in x" as a clear example of bias and it isn't an open or close matter. There's an assumption that everything in the name of feminism is fair and good. In reality, in namesake alone it's not gender neutral. Many people might legitimately object to things such as making women a special cause in technology. It's a women are welcome kind of thing until women are more welcome than men and that's sometimes what is happening. Expressing yourself crudely through SSID names, is, crude. Some people might even only be doing it to mess around as opposed to a form of protest. It's not exactly the end of the world in any case. I suggest in future those participants simply boo loudly and shout down the speaker screaming "sexist" while banging on things such as chair backs as this appear to be acceptable behaviour today. At the end of the day, we're talking about people screwing around with what's essentially text messages. If you don't like it, then put down your phone, or just ignore it. Alternatively, even put your own SSID in as a rebuttal. As someone genuinely concerned about bias in technology, of all shapes and sizes, people posting silly SSIDs doesn't rank highly in my list of forms of bias that genuinely present a barrier for people wishing to engage in technology. In fact, it doesn't rank on that list altogether. I can't ever imagine giving up my passion in technology because of a silly SSID name, something someone wrote on a toilet wall, etc. There's also a line you don't want to cross with spoiling people's harmless fun or expressions. What you have here are two things potentially threatening to provoke the kind of bias they're trying to prevent. What I seem to be seeing from all this is people standing and proclaiming to be doing so in the name of women's rights really saying things like "women are so sensitive, they can't take a joke, therefore no one in technology is allowed to make a joke otherwise women will feel unwelcome". I personally don't think that's true but that's what this report is effectively saying.
The only obstacle to contributing to open source is not having an internet connection
I more or less get where you're going with that, but it is a bit more complex than internet vs. no internet. I have relatively quick internet and a good computer, but I'm not a very good contributor to OSS. I'm pretty technically literate, but my coding skills basically end at some basic batch/shell scripts and tweaking HTML. I simply don't have the mind to do it, and in college I got stuck in entry level classes for VB, Java, and assembler, with C++ in high school - and I hated every minute of every one of them. I would never do it optionally.
"But Voyager529, there are other ways to help! Donate to projects!" I know. I donate where I can; usually in the $10-$20 range per donation, but I do donate to at least one project a month that's provided some amount of usefulness. That's still a contribution, but requires more than an internet connection - it requires a Paypal account and money (gtfo with cryptocurrency mining as a contribution).
"We need testers and user feedback, Voyager529! That still requires nothing more than an internet connection, doesn't cost money, and you don't have to be a programmer to do it!" Not so fast. I do this for FreeNAS actually, or at least, I try to. As such, I need something to run FreeNAS *on* - it's not terribly helpful to run FreeNAS in a VM with no data to store. My 15TB NAS, a tiny little thing compared to the folks in /r/datahoarders, still cost about $900 for the initial build, though it's been a bit of a Ship-of-Thesseus situation such that only the PSU and the actual hard drives are original kit. Regardless, FreeNAS requires an actual NAS, and really if I were trying to be a hardcore tester, I'd have more than one of them so I could run nightly builds and stuff with no worry of data loss, but now we're talking about yet another investment. pfSense and other router distributions require hardware and a means to configure them as such (good luck with that for people with satellite internet or WISP connections), LAMP applications require web servers and domain knowledge of how to utilize them.
A desktop Linux distribution big enough to be a daily driver is a Linux distribution big enough to not need my contributions - there are precisely zero people on the Debian mailing list who give a s!!t what I have to say, but RebornOS is a bit small for me to feel comfortable installing on my primary computer, meaning I'd need a secondary one - which of course is still additional hardware and additional expense. Even so, if I'm going to use it with any level of efficacy to be a good tester, I need to be using it at least half the time, which means I need to be able to replicate data from one machine to the other, which now adds to the complexity of how daily tasks are being performed...in summary, being a tester/feedback participant for an OSS project implies "bring your own QA environment" - which is still more than an internet connection.
"Okay fine...but you can still help with documentation! You're pretty well-written and can help spruce up documents which have not been the best-maintained...and THAT definitely requires nothing more than an internet connection, so stop whining!" True...except it's not completely true. As a technically savvy end user, the areas of documentation that generally need the most work are the areas where common problems are preempted. Even if I were given access to the documents to edit (and yes, some projects do take the Wiki approach), general usability documentation should mostly be unnecessary if a project is written even a little bit well. If it's not, then the contribution is "here's how to make this function more readily apparent for end users", which can be helpful and sometimes can be the way to implement positive changes, but it's just as common for such things to end up as "wontfix" because the UX developer knows best. FAQs and troubleshooting guides are good places to start, but they require a w
Whereas in America, it's the other way around - with Google execs demanding that white men not be allowed to participate in conferences and firing anybody who suggests that men and women may be different in noticeable ways.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Wait a second: how are you supposed to prove that you didn't demand a dowry?
All women are just plain crabby and irritable. Studies have shown that it stems from bottling up those farts all day long.
National Socialism also stands for something completely different than all the horrors that happened under its name.
National Socialism isn't about shoving people into concentration camps.
National Socialism isn't about mass genocide.
But as always actions and results speak louder than words.
At this point I give it > 50% that feminist activists set those up so they'd have a topic to complain about and claim sexism. Have you seen how many times their high publicity complaints turn out to either be completely made up, or so mischaracterized it completely misrepresents the original action. Also feminism is an antagonistic political group, it's highly debateable how representative it is of "women" at all. My experience is feminism is just as hostile towards women that won't repeat their narrative as they claim sexist men are.
Treat them like everybody else, but don't be a crass misogynistic asshole in how you talk. If you're real and approachable sooner or later you're going to know far more women online than you really wanted to. Some of them will even hit on you. Some of them will even hit on you for bdsm related cybersex, or real sex.
While the above discussed real experiences, your mileage may vary. You might find yourself at the mercy of a dom, cuckolded, or holding the emotional baggage of women who are busy dating other shitty guys and then whining to you about it while never actually giving you a shot, because 'why ruin the good thing of just being friends'? :)
Seriously though there are and have been plenty of women in open source dating back decades. However most of them are not your 'average' female, and most of them keep their 'women life' and their 'techie life' separate, for the simple reason that most women didn't have interest then and still don't have interest now. What passes for a nerd, geek, etc today is so diluted that we are affirmative action-ing male, female, and ethnic minorities into tech because 'it looked cool on tv', rather than first stimulating their interests with realistic examples and finding out if they fall into either STEM, or more intuitive service-based computing domains. (I separate the two because some peopel are more on the scientific/analytic side of things, and others are better on the help desk/learning how apps function side of things without the scientific background. More the art of computers to the STEM-based science of them.)
There is nothing stopping any woman from contributing to open Source. All they have to do is write the code and post to github.
..
> At this point I give it > 50% that feminist activists set those up so they'd have a topic to complain about and claim sexism
You would be correct. There's a set of feminist activists who attended techie conferences specifically with the intend of finding sexual harassment. They then use evidence of such harassment as a pretext to getting the male organizers removed. for a typical example see this from July 2012. If you ever come across such at a conference, record all such encounters, as you may need it as evidence to clear your name later on.
You need a 'code of conduct' for your event in Delhi? Seems to say a lot about the city/country and maybe that's really the heart of the problem as opposed to the 'open source community'.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
National Socialism stood for getting rid of Jews, and treating other races as inferiors. They weren't all that subtle about it.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Most Indian coders say they are self-taught
https://qz.com/1187943/most-in...
Casteism