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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.
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.
...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
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.
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.