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Women in the Open Source/Free Software Communities?
MikeA asks: "We know what men have done in the community and it seems that all the 'big names' are men. Are there any female kernel hackers out there? Are there any major projects run by women or that have women as developers? Are there even many women using Linux? If not, why not? How do we attract more women to these development projects? We are missing out on a large user base and development resource if women aren't interested. " I agree, so I thought it would be nice to take the time to discuss what what the women have done for the community. What accomplishments they've made, the types of projects they get involved in, and any hopes they have for the future.
Come on, admit it, you guys just want more geek girls. :)
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
theres a distro comin up.. gurlLinux.. http://www.gurlLinux.org
Of course there are women using Linux. Check out the following:
http://www.linuxchix.org/
This should at least get you to a starting point.
You know, I've often wondered the ramifications of having a different sex devolop software. Just for the mere fact that male/female brains work differently. For example, men are more vector based using distances an bearings in navigation, while the woman uses landmarks and left, right, etc. While this seems sexist to some, this is what current research (that I've read) is indicating. It might be interesting to see the differences in design that arise.
LinuxChix would be a good first stop for finding female hackers. *I* was pretty happy to find others of my kind there. :) -> Terri
Just Kidding!
Anyway, one of the problems I can immediately see/grok is that, at least when I went to college these past 5 years, is that there was a ratio of like 20:1 of male to female in the CS department.
It was slightly better in the EE department, of like 8:1, but that's still pretty bad.
Maybe this is different in other schools, states, or countries, but that would seem to put an damper on the party spirit already. Any female contributors to the Open Source, internet, or computing world have very many hurdles. I'd say they deserve congrats for that.
This brings a different problem to light, on how to change this statistic. If women don't participate in this exciting new revolution, the internet, e-commerce, and Open Source, among others, will they be left behind? Will there be a missing perspective? How do we change this?
It isn't enough that women be part of the creative-web design aspects of the internet. They need to be involved in the design, development, and implementation of it as well. I apologize if my stereotypes are outdated. Perhaps women are a very big part of the movement; just that in my corner of the world, I haven't seen it yet.
Anyone want to correct me?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
This is a problem expierienced in the whole computing field. and is expierience in many fields other than computing engineering springs to mind as a field where males dominate the field. The fact that women have no interest in coding for the pure joy of it Is not a free software problem women see computers as tools to get a particular job done. ^nevyn^
I recall that the cover even taunted Bill Gates (although I don't remember exactly how). If you live in Orange County, SoCal ...you can drop by the Kinokuniya Bookstore in the Costa Mesa Yaohan to see if they still have it in stock.
How much of this difference is also fostered by boys learning from men and girls learning from women, btw?
Just the fact that boys see men using numbers and girls see women using landmarks?
Anyway, I'm proud to announce that I am a man/boy/male that uses landmarks, lefts and rights, and locations rather than numbers. I have horrible distance/time perception. How can anyone tell, other than guessing, scale, distance, time, etc?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
They reduce my efficiency.
"Get off your computer....",
"You love your computer more than me",
"Quit banging on your keyboard and come bang on me for awhile..."
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Sigh. Open source is about letting people do whatever they want with the source code. It's about freedom. If hardly any women want to use it, that's their choice. Doing nothing, absolutely nothing, with open source is also allowed. Anyone who's followed the gender wars knows that open source is everything feminists claim that women want. The organizations are non-hierarchical and base their decisions largely on consensus. The demands to make a profit, beat a competitor, and win contracts are virtually non-existent. It's open, inviting, and totally inclusive. Maybe women are just love corporate scheming and nasty power games more than they let on.
-- $SIGNATURE
but just because a chick can learn linux, does not mean she has accomplished much. And THAT was the point of the article.
. . . was, of course, Admiral Grace Hopper, oldest serving officer (of *either* sex) in the US Navy, project leader of the team that built the first commercial general purpose language, and a Righteous Babe.
"Don't ask for permission. Just do it! It's easier to apologize for having done something than it is to get permission to do it." - G. Hopper
Which is why OpenSource development works so well when you come to think of it.
I few weeks ago, I heard a story on NPR about how in Y2K projects, there is a disproportinatly high number of women managers.
The main reason they sited was this...
When men where given the opportunity to manage these projects, they saw them as troubesome, and thought that it wouldn't advance their carreer because they thought there wouldn't be any glory in Y2K work. So, the women filled in the spots.
Could this relate to why there aren't many women in open source? I mean, most of the insentive for open source work is in the glory? (not meant to be flamebait).
There are many people who worship Alan Cox or John Carmack. Now imagine if Carmack was female. She would not get left alone. Ever! A big load of geek guys would be trying to score a date. She would not be able to work on quake. guys already think Carmack is a god. Now imagine a female saying
"you like!,,, I don't care if you like"
That would be one bad ass chick.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
I don't care if the person who wrote some code or contributed to open source has a penis or a vagina. Why should I? What does it matter?
If a person wants to contribute or not, it's up to them. I would hope as reasonable intelligent individuals we wouldn't care about this sort of gender rubbish which plagues the rest society. It's not like open source advertises and makes all the ads blue to favour males.
Open source is a lump of clay on a table with a sign that reads, in english, "play with me". If women don't want to play, their choice. We should be more concerned the sign is in english as that actually EXCLUDES people, some of which even have vaginas!
I know it's kinda extreem but she's the only O.S. women I know of. Still I think all of the perl porters are male.
The power of technology is manifest in how it is applied within the social matrix.
There are probably many factors involved, including but not limited to:
1) Cultural -- the US is a major factor in computing and the US is still a society that for the most part expects boys to play with screwdrivers and footballs and automobile engines (and therefore become engineers of some sort) and girls to play with dolls and play kitchen sets and games like "Let's go to the Mall" (and therefore become homemakers and housewives.)
2) Environmental -- CompSci is a science/engineering discipline. Engineering and science are still dramatically male-dominated. Anyone who wants to believe otherwise, fine, but try to find a female professor in any science/engineering dscipline, or better yet, try to become a female professor. Females certainly aren't encouraged to become CompSci majors, and are probably discouraged in many cases.
3) Situational -- I'm sure plenty of women are scared away from computers the first time they show up at a user's group meeting or similar get-together, log into IRC and start chatting, send EMail, post on
Yadda yadda yadda. Isn't there a FAQ with this info someplace yet?
And, semi-off-topic, I really get annoyed with women who call themselves "grrls" or something similar like that. I find it just as annoying as 31337 5p33k.
-=-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-=-
My mom's going to kick you in the face!
Just to play the devil's advocate for a bit...
:)
Does it really matter if any women are in the open source developer community? Does it matter if Linux was created by a man rather than a woman? Would some massive economic, social and spiritual change happen because it just happens that the author of a piece of software was female?
Maybe I have never been big on "heroes" or maybe it's just the fact that I never really looked up to anyone as a child and said I wanted to be like them because they were famous, but I think it's pretty silly to think that there is a problem in the world if a particular field is dominated by men. Now I'm not saying that it's ok to discourage people from going into a field of work because it's dominated by men, what I am against is pushing someone towards a field strictly because it is and going as far as to mount an entire campaign around it.
Men and women are not the same; physically and psychologically. While growing up, each person should be given a broad range of fields they can work in when they get older and should be free to make up their own decisions about which one they enjoy the most and what they as an individual are most suited towards.
Of course, as a man, I don't really have a good perspective on how women are treated as they grow up. Maybe there is a good amount of discouragement which men don't get when trying to enter a male dominated field. This is not to say that men aren't discouraged when entering a male dominated field either, it's just we are too self absorbed to care what other people, especially men, think.
Then again, I would like to find a woman who understood my work so I doubt have to dumb down my conversation. I really hate doing that.
--
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
As for open source: over the years, I've found that generally I contribute to projects which directly affect both myself and others who share the same ideals. I wouldn't be caught dead assisting in writing some inane Quake user editor because I don't feel it positively contributes to the world at large. However, I've happily contributed to Mozilla, Rio MP3 transfer software, a now-abandoned terminal emulator for OS/2, xlockmore, and other projects (including games!) which LONG pre-date Linux and the Open Source movement. These projects have helped me feel like I'm making a difference, like I'm doing something to help my peers. I certainly wouldn't rule out assisting in kernel development, device drivers, or pure UNIX-related stuff on an idealistic basis. However....
I'd never presume to speak for women in general, but most of those females I know who program and use *NIX as much as I do don't obsessively do so. On the contrary, most men I know who program and use *NIX do so all night long, sustaining themselves on Jolt and Oreos. I'll bring myself to do that once in a blue moon, but I (like my friends) like to spend more of my free time away from computers. When I get home in the evenings, I like to spend time with my cats, tutor, direct musicals, go out dancing, or a whole slew of other things which don't directly relate to programming. Because of this, I don't usually get involved with open source projects which are time-critical (like kernel releases) or require intense debugging and pouring over technical manuals (like device drivers). I do enough of that at my day job -- and I'd rather leave that sort of work to someone who really enjoys hooking up a logic analyzer, a disassembler and an external serial console to their PC at 2AM to try and get that bizarro sound card warbling correctly with the latest bleeding-edge kernel release.
So when you ask "How do we attract more women to these development projects?" you might also want to ask yourself "Are these projects something which a woman would want to work on?"
I'll let someone else give a review of the significant computing accomplishments provided by women to the Linux and Open Source movements . . . but if it's anything like the contributions women have made to commercial operating systems over the years, it may well be true that key portions of Linux were written entirely by women!
Oh, and by the way, keep your judgements of my preferences of recreational activites to yourself. Just because I don't and won't play Quake doesn't mean I will do anything to stop you from doing so.
"But always she's the spectre of uncertainty I first endured, then faded, then embraced..."
Well, NewsTrolls is headed up by me and we run Linux/Apache and at home I've got a dual-boot Win98/OpenLinux2.2 and a G4...(and a Globablys 130 that I haven't figured out what to do with...yet)
;P)...
Seriously, women in Linux is a real issue b/c the entire tech industry except PR and marketing is almost void of woman (and please don't bring up the what-about-Kim-Polese-example
I brought the issue up in my review-- On Bill, his Mini-Me's and the Linux Alternative of Gary Rivlin's book the Plot to Get Bill Gates and it got a lot of reaction. I got tons of emails from women and some men thanking me for pointing out some of the bullshit in tech in general but also got some seriously disturbed and angry guys telling me to shut the hell up...
I wrote to Gary Rivlin about it which turned into an interview on the whole issue of women in tech
Personally, I can count on one hand the women I feel like can relate to what I do, and I think that's sad. I wish there were more of us out there...real women who want to know more than where to shop and read friggin' horoscopes and snotty guys-are-losers advice columns...
--diva
diva Pasty Drone NewsTrolls, Inc.
You don't see many women hacking coding for the same reasons you don't see many women in technology related disciplines across the board. Of course there are some, as the link in one of the earlier posts shows.
This has probably been discussed here before but I'll say it again anyway. There are a few reasons I can think of, both are generalizations, I'm not suggesting that they are true of everyone.
1) Women aren't pushed to go into technology related fields. This isn't as true as it used to be. But still, at my school (U of Minnesota) the male/female ratio is about 30:1 in the EE department, and there is 1 female professor out of about 40. It's a *bit* better in a few of the other engineering departments, chemical engineering is probably 15:1, CS is probably 20:1. When I was in high school, my calc class was pretty much a 50/50 m/f ratio. But the only people who went into tech fields were guys. The women in the class would tell me they simply weren't interested. I think parents play a big part in this. My parents always suggested I go for engineering. As much as I hate to admit it, thats probably half the reason I did. I hardly know any women who's parents pushed them in that direction.
2) "Biological" differences between men and women. This is risky ground, and nothing new really, but I'll say it anyway. Men seem to be better at disciplines that require a lot of "logical" thinking, women are better at at jobs that involve more human interaction. I don't think this plays nearly as big of a role as reason 1, however.
Admiral Grace Hopper may be a hard coder and a Righteous Babe, but I'm putting my vote in for Ada Lovelace. I mean really. This chick was the first programmer (of *either* sex), ever. She wrote assembly code and she had to do all her debugging without actually running any tests of her programs. It's too bad her slacker husband couldn't get his com-u-turd finished. I wonder if anyone has ever gone ahead and built that thing, I bet most of Ada's code would have run correctly on it.
I'm sure plenty of women are scared away from computers the first time they show up at a user's group meeting or similar get-together, log into IRC and start chatting, send EMail, post on /. or any other method of socializing whereby it becomes known that they are female.
Utter and complete bullshit. Yes, sometimes you run across the stalker who won't leave you alone, and you have to change your email addresses and install lots of filters. But this rubbish about women being scared away is simply perpetuating the myth that "women are scared, defenseless little creatures who must be protected from the big bad world at all costs."
Perhaps your mother or your grandmother viewed the world that way, but the vast majority of women my age (twentysomethings, that is) are fully actualized, self-confident people who know how to set up a mail filter, or at least who know how to man procmail or RTFM of their favorite mail reader.
The quicker you guys learn that today's woman can take care of herself, the quicker you'll find that elusive mate you've been looking for these past few years.
In your favor, though, your first two points are quite valid and need more serious attention. I'm doing my part by tutoring middle-school and high-school girls in math, science, and computers. Why not get your favorite female friend who likes geek stuff to do the same thing?
"But always she's the spectre of uncertainty I first endured, then faded, then embraced..."
I wouldn't say this is a correction more than an adjustment. At the risk of sounding chauvenistic I suppose women would have to want to contribute to the open source movement.
slightly better in the EE department, of like 8:1, but that's still pretty bad
I don't think that bad adequately describes the ratios here. Perhaps lopsided, and lopsided may not be bad. When my team (Browns, Indians, pretty much everything Cleveland) has a lopsided victory I'm pretty fired up. I suppose the losing teams fans may describe it as a bad loss. So bad, I guess, is a matter of perspective and the vision of the end result.
If women don't participate in this exciting new revolution, the internet, e-commerce, and Open Source, among others, will they be left behind? Will there be a missing perspective? How do we change this?
I (a man) graduated with an English Lit degree and the ratios in my major were probably in the neighborhood described above. I suppose similar ratios exist in education.
I don't recall the women trying to figure out what to do to change this, no one wondered if the men would be left behind or if they could provide a missing perspective. In fact I would argue that those so absorbed in science and technology may be missing out in the fascinating world of literature (or maybe not).
Back to my original point of wanting to participate in the open source revolution, perhaps they just have better things to do. Only recently has my wife decided to learn how to email, and that's only because her friends asked her if she got their email. My wife got tired of asking if I'd received the email yet and then having me describe what it said.
I would never discount her contribution to society as a wonderful mother. I would never discount the contributions of women teachers and journalists (ok, well maybe the journalists). It took other women to motivate my wife to get barely interested in computers. If we really need women then perhaps the women contributors are the best advocates for change. Perhaps the men shouldn't concern themselves with deficiencies in the system.
Lets face it, Men are more involved because we do not indicate to women that we would give them praise for being a Linux Kernel hacker. This issue is not subject to Linux alone. In universities all over the planet, men are the majority in the CS departments. Of the men in the CS departments you can figure that at least a handfull have used Linux, and of the handfull at least one of them may get involved at looking in some code from the distro. For a women to be the one person who decided to look at the sources seems to be unthinkable. I have a girlfriend who loves to work on computers and even works doing tech support for M$ windows98. However, she is rare in her field. She tells me that there are about 5 or 10 other women out of about 100 or so people in her deppartmnet. In general, women don't seem to be encouraged to pursue computer rellated things. I remember one time I was tottaly enfactuated with a chick who was wearing a Linux T-shirt. She wasn't tooo extremly pretty or anything, but I remeber myself thinking "I wonder if she has a boyfriend". It was the fact that I had actually found a Linux chick that made me attracted to her. Most girls don't figure that if they get involved with Linux that there is a whole sub culture of nerdy type guys ready to welcome them to the scean. Obviously if a chick gets involved with linux it is not to get guys, it is to use an awsome opperating system. They are probably just as nerdy as the rest of us. Historically this is the type of attention women have been subjected to. Women seem to be found in places that men accept them. Physically accept them. It almost seems like it might be human nature but I know its not. Women are becomeing much more liberated these days, and it is only a matter of time. However, we must condition women from a young age to pursue their natural ablity to solve complex problems. A good example is the fact that women literally use both parts of their brain when speaking aloud. Men use their left side of the brain. So women are natural born kernel hackers, they just don't know it yet. We have to make them feel welcome in our world of men. This is not the "good'ol boys club" anymore. -Diz
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
Girls of the E-School Calendar idea from UVA. A little out there, I think. But... :)
ARE female! They just hire the same two "geek-boys" to portray them in public.
Haven't you all figured this out yet? And you call yourselves "intelligent"!
To start things off... While I was reading the other replys, one thing that my mom once said came to my mind. She asked me why there were dozens of sound cards on the market, all of which do the same thing, many of which are of almost identical quality, and few of which are compatible with the same drivers or games? (this was in the day before DirectX, OSS, or too many other sound standards, including Sound Blaster). It just didn't make much sense to her. And, quite frankly, it doesn't make much sense to me now that I look at it. Here's my point: nearly every female in my family that helped me form my opinion of the opposite sex displayed one characteristic; a no-B.S., cut-the-crap sensibility that often left many males scrambling to come up with an explanation that even somewhat logical. So, to get to the point of the original question, why would a woman (who is probably more clear-headed than her male counterparts) waste countless hours debugging a driver for a sound card or other peripheral so obscure that probably five Linux users worldwide would use it, when there are excellent and very well-supported solutions elsewhere? I guess that if the open-source movement stopped wasting its time on trivial matters, inherently unsolvable political debates, and other stuff like that, women would be more attracted to it. P.S. In case you are wondering, I am a male; just one who truly views women to be on an equal plane.
Well here I am posting to another question about women involved with linux.
I am not involved in FSF - open source or anything really high tech right now.
I am on a year of rest from the task of getting my computer science degree. I sit at home and code perl for fun and play on my linux box trying to optimize and customize it to my standards. I write perl to give myself cute little shortcuts, and occassionally I help a friend by working on a nifty little perl script to handle some form input.
Not very kernel happy am I? Well perhaps I will be in the future. I would like a little open source hobby, perhaps when I go back to school, I will have the confidence to do more than just read all the C that makes my OS run.
There is a lack of women in the techie world though - most of the women I know who are technologically able are in web design and graphic arts. Perhaps one day there will be more girls in computer science, and in technology in general. I hope so. But for now, I have joined linuxchix and I write perl code - and I don't feel like the only one.
--
I find it amusing that the very first thing on their page is how they 'called in the SWAT team' (two men) to fix a problem they were having with their mailing list.
:(
flamebait
Obviously, there are women in these fields, but not a great deal of us. Those of us that are here generally stay low profile. Why? Tons of reasons. Part of it is the fact that as soon as people discover that you are a female with a clue, there are two common responces (there are more, but these are the ones you get ALL the time).
One - You really don't have a clue, i can treat you like dirt and get away with it, because i'm male, and only males have a clue when it comes to computers.
Two - Ooooh! a female with a clue. She wants to go to bed with me. She really will be thrilled to be informed that i'm her best ambition in life, and heck, i get a new bed buddy out of the deal.
Those of us that survive that, because we love the toys, or have more important things to worry about, keep a very low profile. Just as self defence. Add to that, often we don't get a more intelligent responce by the other females (outside the industry) that we know. "What do you mean you work in computers? Don't you mean you're a technical writer (at best)? -Real- women don't use computers."
Now, don't get me wrong, i have some wonderful female and male friends who are completely savvy. And i do use *nix. I'm cozy w/many flavors. I just don't advertise. And as someone above put it, i do my time at the office. After 60 hours a week getting code and servers to do what i want, when i get home, my computer there is for games and communication w/friends only. I'd rather go to ballet, and out to coffee, than spend yet MORE time staring at that screen.
If you want to find lots of women w/a computer clue, find one. She knows more as friends, and almost with out a doubt, emails/trades stores/shares code/shares info with quite a few more. It's the proverbial underground network. In order to find us, you have to know us. *wry grin* Not the most welcomeing of things, but it's getting more public and better every year. When i started in the "professional" workforce, i knew less than 5 tech savvy women. Now i hear from over a 100 a day. That's just in 3 years. Give us time. As our network gets stronger, and the environments get less hostile, we will get more visible.
Not directly a linux user, she did foresee and have a fair hand in creating the whole concept of the "difference engine" or computer as we call it. Who is this.........Lady Ada Byron-Lovelace. Learn more about the lady at: http://www.cs.yale.edu/~tap/Files/ada-bio.html Really, we owe a lot to her and the other unsung female heroines of computing
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
I think some of the reason why there are fewer women in general in the community, is because they are not interested in the payoff of being in the community. Open Source still definitely has a hierarchical order. The value function has just shifted from money to ability. A rich hacker is no better than a poor hacker. Those in the community with the best ability are the most revered. It may very well be that the payoff a women would get from having a group of males respect her is a lot less than a male would percieve. And thus a female is less willing to participate because the reward is not as great for her.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Before you flame me, I don't agree with all of the article - but it does provide some understanding on the general lack of women in CS.
:)
/grr(*r)ls/, and as a former punk rocker, I really though it was rather silly - what does it mean? And what are all of the permentations of the numbers of r's and the meaning of each r - if you have more r's does it mean you are more angry?
My opinion:
If women have these views that this is what is holding them back, it is no wonder why they are being held back. It is quite a cycle, women feel held back, therefore are held back.
The Link
Why are There so Few Female Computer Scientists?
My personal outlook:
Nobody is holding my back, or down. I have encountered almost no gender related prejudice in my life from other techies. I encounter more prejudice on the fact I can get started on talking about computers and be stuck on the topic forever. And that is my own geeky fault.
On the terms grrls, chix, and the like
I would rather prefer chix and grrls than womyn. But to tell the truth all of these silly slangs annoy me too. I remeber all the grunge women calling themselves
--
I'm a self-proclaimed geek girl, myself. And... I'm not sure if this whole thing about /. doing features about "Where are all the geek women?" is a facination thing or what... but I'm kinda asking the same question.
I have been running Linux for about four years now. I am the president of the Linux User's Group here at the university I attend and I have a programming job with a prof here on campus doing unix programming/DB and web stuff.
Honestly, I have never met another woman that is as knowledgable in the same areas that I am. There are quite a few female CS majors, but I haven't met any others that use Linux for programming, etc. Maybe I have a higher opinion of Unix/Linux programmers, I don't know. I've never met any other women that were.
Supposedly, I am on the CS common interest floor for women. I think three other people besides myself who are CS majors. So either the computer savvy women elsewhere or there just aren't many at all.
- Jess
When I was in elementary and middle school (in a nationally acclaimed school system), the teachers would generally say that us girls should be in higher level math and science courses. However, what they said is not actually what they did. From the time I was in first grade, my mother and I had to fight constantly to get the school to actually place me into classes that would challenge me in math and science; the school's excuse would always be "Well, these classes are hard, and her schedule is already challenging." This pattern continued into high school, where I actually had my (female) guidance counselor say to me "But physics is so hard...and so is calculus," to try to discourage me from taking them both in the same year. There were only two teachers in my high school that encouraged me to take computer science courses. I was eventually the only girl in the class.
When I got to college, I talked to some other women in my major. The scary thing is this:
They had the same problems I had.
And unfortunately, this problem also extends to the attitudes school systems take with minority students. At a meeting of the Black Engineering Society, I found students of all minority backgrounds sharing similar experiances.
So what can be done? First, fight for your daughters, sisters, and friends and encourage them to challenge the school's placement reccomendations. If my mother had not stood up for me when I was in first through 12th grades, I would not be here at college on a full scholarship.
Also, please fight the stereotypes in society. When I was working as a computer repair technician at the local CompUSA, many customers would ask to speak with the "real technicians" or call me the 'secretary.' Reactions like this, and present biases make it exceedingly difficult to want to stay in such a profession.
I am one of the lucky women who was encouraged by others to become the geek I am today. We are out there...
-NatMarie rainfa1l@happypuppy.com
This topic is a popular one on a mailing list for women in the computer industry known as systers http://www.systers.org If I remember correctly the major components they list are lack of encouragement in school for girls to be interested in math/science, and lack of mentors/role models for girls to model themselves after. Another friend of mine mentioned that some schools are experimenting with segregated boy/girl classes, and although unpleasant on a number of ideological levels, the girls math/science scores had climbed 30%. There's a reasonable body of research to support the claim that boys get more attention from their teachers in class then girls do. As for the role model component, one friend of mine who attended caltech back when the ratio was 1 woman to 7 men (it's now down to 1 to 3) and then went off for an optical computing PhD. She's so used to being in a pure male environemnt, that she doesn't even recognize if she's the only woman in the room--and more importantly this doesn't bother her. Oh yes, and I looked through the list of debian developers and there are a a couple of female looking names in there, and then some I can't recognize... so I'd have to say that there are women involved in open source.
As I have noted befoer, I am a woman. I have Linux installed at home. My closest female friend has Linux at home. We do exist.
Why is it important that women use Linux? It is important for the same reason it is important thant women drive cars. Remember all the jokes about women drivers from the bad old days? Women driving seemed to be out of the ordinary. I remember a lot of sitcom plots centered around teaching a woman to drive. Now we have Mom as chauffeur. Now we women pay less on insurance. Notice all those minivans? Guess who buys and drives about half of the automobiles in America?
As computers become as common as cars, whoever gets to the mom market and can hold it will have a big advantage.
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
Some of us, I'm sure. Most don't have the energy/initiative/ability.
I'm unsure whether this counts as dating, most of what goes on here. Either is promiscuous general group sharing or it's solid friendship for 4 years or it's two people clinging together and getting married after graduation.
Dating would seem to suggest experimentation, exploration, etc. There aren't enough women here for that to be true for the men, and the women don't seem to want to bother with all the men.
Still, the lop-sided ration makes for interesting situations.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Heh..sad but true. I've noticed that a woman's technical knowledge is in negative proportion to her physical attractiveness. Sure there are some good looking HTML Hags, Graphics Girls and VB Chicks... but a girl who sysadmins a *nix box? Never ever have I seen one I consider attractive.
Of course, this same truism holds true for the guys as well. How do I rate? Well, this thing is low on paper cause my typing ain't coming out of it! hehehehe...
Blar.
See, realize this. Most of you linux hackers were doing this since your early days of high school -- at the very worst since you hit college. In the adolescent social setup, there is often a congregation of people around a theme.. those who get into linux or computers are largely male "geeks". And the most known thing about male "geeks" is that Women Are From Mars.
No, it's not a "women can't do it" problem at this point, it's an "OH MY GAWD THERE IS A GIRL HERE!!!" phenomenon. Girls who do try to play with computers when they're younger have to constantly navigate this.. as a result they're either scared off or they simply don't get the same exchange of information because they're scaring the geeks.
So, take this girl who was actually interested in computers and throw her into college now. Suddenly she's behind all these guys who've been geeking for years with each other, meanwhile she's been forced to learn it on her own, and she feels the disadvantage strongly. Only now it's worse.. suddenly she's "one of the few geekgirls out there" and thusly desirable by all geeks. And she's STILL not getting the information exchange like everyone else.
A lot of women navigate this by hitting online with male monikers and personas to try and circumvent that attitude (btw, someone recently went to the newsgroups posting roughly the same thing under both male and female names, the male got more respect, the female got hit on), or they just quietly duck back into the mold of "learning it for themselves" as they've always done.
It's a bad situation, really. What *I* would like to see as a strong female geek (who is also trying to avoid hiding either myself or my femininity) is more women helping women, and more women helping the young girls. I don't advocate complete separation.. but having support systems and role models for those starting out is vital. I also don't think that trying to change the geek mindset of "OH MY GAWD THERE IS A GIRL HERE" is going to work, that's just too much a part of being a geek.
As for "why aren't there women in open source support sites out there?" .. uh, very recently there was an article posted here about linuxchix.org.
I, personally, would love to start a branch for women in FreeBSD .. an even rarer phenomenon in my experience. :)
UNIX Systems and Network Administrator and FreeBSD chick,
Gwendolyn R. Schmidt
I don't think it matters that Linux was crafted by a male or female set of hands. I think it does matter that women are not more a part of the Open Source movement or part of being online because both are revolutions of power away from central authorities and in the hands of people who now have voices.
If women aren't involved(out of lack of foresight), then they aren't given voices, or the choice to speak, and everyone loses.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
As for open source: over the years, I've found that generally I contribute to projects which directly affect both myself and others who share the same ideals...
This, I think, is the major difference between male and female geeks (yes, I'm generalizing. Hear me out.) Female geeks tend towards ends-oriented projects. We aim for a goal, and the means by which we try to attain it are justified by the end results. Male geeks, on the other hand, tend towards means-oriented projects. Even if they never get to the end they were originally aiming for, or wind up accomplishing something completely different, the fact that they spent hours on end trying to get there counts for a lot. Men, therefore, will stay up all night drinking Jolt and coding because they feel justified in doing so even if nothing definitive comes of the effort - it's the effort itself that counts. Women want to know that their time and energy is spent on something they can look at when the process is all over.
So when you ask "How do we attract more women to these development projects?" you might also want to ask yourself "Are these projects something which a woman would want to work on?"
I'd like to reference the Y2K thread started by AC and continued by Paranoid Diatribe here - women are working in disproportionate numbers on this project because they feel that their time is well spent, as they will be able to see a definite end result. In addition, the fact that people could be inconvenienced (to say the least!) if the problems are not corrected makes women feel like they are contributing something to the well-being of the world.
I can only hope that other girls in my class were just as impressed with those stories of a woman far ahead of her time.
Heaven knows I could have benefited from one. All I have learned about computing has been in the last four years. Granted, this has been a very good time to learn just based on the developments in the Internet, the Web, and the open source community, but my road towards geekdom would have been much simpler had I been exposed to computing - and female role models in the field - at a younger age.
Which brings me to an interesting question: ARE there any high-profile women in the computing industry? Of course, anyone reading this will know (or have learned in this thread) about Ada Lovelace and others in programming, but everyone knows who Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and (now) Linus Torvalds are. Are there any female counterparts?
---
Female geeks: http://wondergeeks.net
This geek: http://wondergeeks.net/users/starlady
There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth fro
What's wrong with the excuse that you're a bad student? It worked with me =)
Just get your act together. Either she's a fair prof and you're not putting in enough effort, or she's unfair and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it except give your best.
In either case the only thing you can do is try to learn as much as possible, pass the class, and go on with your life.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I'd imagine that a disproportionate gender ratio in the engineering disciplines is bad because, as in medicine, concerns of women, which may differ from concerns of men, get less attention because they just aren't conceived in the minds of men.
If women don't participate in this exciting new revolution, the internet, e-commerce, and Open Source, among others, will they be left behind? Will there be a missing perspective? How do we change this?
I (a man) graduated with an English Lit degree and the ratios in my major were probably in the neighborhood described above. I suppose similar ratios exist in education.
I don't recall the women trying to figure out what to do to change this, no one wondered if the men would be left behind or if they could provide a missing perspective. In fact I would argue that those so absorbed in science and technology may be missing out in the fascinating world of literature (or maybe not).
What, so if they aren't complaining, or they are too busy to think about it, or if they don't realize there is a problem, or because they don't see the problem means there isn't one to be tackled? Just because there is a gender ratio doesn't mean its a good thing.
I certainly have better things to do than participate in many open source revolutions. I however have a choice because I am connected to the system, if nothing else through my friends, my job, and through Slashdot.
Sigh. I don't know, but I think everyone needs to be concerned about deficiences in the system. Because if there is a deficiency, then there is a problem just waiting to be uncovered, and if everyone is part of the system, everyone is affected.
Two arguments: If women are no different then men, then there is no *need* to push them into the field, because men can do just as well in stead of women. If this were true, then I would think women would already be involved as much as men, because they are no different then men. Since they are not involved, I would take that to mean there is a difference somewhere, either on the personal level(which I don't believe) or the social level.
If women are needed in the field, and they are held back because society hasn't yet adapted to the changing world, and we don't do our part to help, we are as guilty as those who do their part to hinder. We're just watching them close the world off to women.
I'm wondering if you could get your wife to think about this and reply, actually.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Isn't this some of what the question asked?
Here's a thread talking about some of the first female contributors to the computing field, programming, etc. Not Open Source, but still very core stuff.
Was it Ada who also did the frequency hopping stuff that the military later used for their torpedoes and is now being used in such things as TDMA(or is it CDMA?)
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
No, come to think of it, it wasn't Ada that did the frequency hopping bit.
That was a female actress in the US, I think. Anyone remember her name? Shame on me for not knowing it.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
How else will I get intelligent children?
Anyway, that's irrelevant to the topic. Have you women, in this underground network, ever conspired to take over the world?
For example, is Fiona Carly of HP part of your network?
Being visible may not be a good thing, btw. Especially if it makes you a target. Regardless, I'd think this network needs to get involved in getting girls into the network so that when they get into college and workforce you have even better/stronger connections.
There's already very many old-boys networks around. It'd be ironically just if there were a few women's networks to advance the cause and needs of women.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Actually, yes I am Black. When I was working at CompUSA I was just 16-17 years old (and believe me, age had less to do with it. than gender, as the other female tech could tell you).
I don't think I have blown out my ego, I have just made observations based on my experiences. I am glad to hear the women in your school are given lots of support. If you feel that you were not given engough support, I encourage you to fight for what every student deserves.
Which is exactly what I am trying to do now in my own town.
-NatMarie rainfa1l@happypuppy.com
Actually, yes I am Black. When I was working at CompUSA I was just 16-17 years old (and believe me, age had less to do with it than gender, as the other female tech could tell you).
I don't think I have blown out my ego, I have just made observations based on my experiences in response to the topic. I am glad to hear the women in your school are given lots of support. If you feel that you were not given engough support, I encourage you to fight for what every student deserves.
Which is exactly what I am trying to do now in my own town.
-NatMarie rainfa1l@happypuppy.com
I know quite some female hackers, they kinds that will make 99% of slashdot bow their heads in shame. They can hack C, and uh oh, asm too. I have seen them hack drivers.
;-)"
...", that it drives them nuts.
segmond: "Oh, there is no driver for it yet."
chick: "So? I will hack a driver for it."
3 days later.
chick: "Seg, wanna help me test my driver, it hasn't crashed yet, just need you to help me test it. BTW beat you to it, nah nah:P"
segmond: "Did I tell you I am looking for a wife?
Yup, I know 3 such chicks, and I swear, I wasn't looking. One is 22, the other is 27 and the other is 17. 22 did CS, not at MIT, and no! it wasn't her school that made her who she is. 27 did partially CS and EE. 17 is still in high school.
If you ever run into them in the online world, you will not know they are chicks. Why? because they don't pick feminine nicks, they don't wanna be bothered cuz of their sex, they want to be treated just like the guys. Ya, it is sad. Even in the geek cultures, female geeks maybe accepted, but they just get too much crap, "Are you really female? Wanna hook up?
For the ones I know, they hack both in FreeBSD and Linux.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
I can't speak for the free software movement community, but in the corporate world, there are women in IT. For example, there are 8 women in my group of 50 consultants, one that is a senior project manager. I have had three women supervisors, one was a senior project manager and two were department heads. Although the numbers are not overwhelming, the women are there. I enjoyed working for these women but was often accused of being a "traitor" by some of my male colleagues when I agreed with the female supervisor.
:)
I think the lack of women in startups and garage shop environments has more to do with culture than skill. Most women would not be interested in working with a group of single males in an enterprise with a high degree of risk. Why work for stock options and ramen noodles when you can work for a consulting firm with a 401K and health benefits. In general, women have different priorities, which is not bad, but different. People who are married, both male and female, have very different priorities, especially if they have families.
I would say that at college and entry-level positions, brute force, geek aggression is widespread. This is a big turn off to women looking into computing as a career. Unfortunately, entry level CS jobs do not require good communication skills or most geeks would be hard up on getting a job. As one moves up the food chain, communication becomes very important and women tend to excel in these areas. The trick is surviving the tree house mentality - No Girls Allowed! Geeks tend to value pure technical skills and not appreciate skills like project management. Measuring the involvement of females in IT on the basis of the number of lines of code contributed to the free source movement is a very one-dimensional view of the computing world.
As for my part, I try to mentor newbies from both sexes and to network with female IT professionals. The good news for all of us is that GCC is an equal opportunity compiler
If anything, you can't find the good looking computer geeks because they're out doing other things as well as kernel hacking. We actually like being social beyond a /. post, and like the outdoors. And, we're not going to be attracted to those who aren't...
Oh, and for the record, I'm 5' 5", 123lbs, medium length, brown hair, can code in multiple languages, am training to do Sys Admin work on Solaris, teaching myself Perl for fun... yadda, yadda.. But I also go hiking and dancing and like not being in front of a computer.
---Lee
She designed COBOL! Ecch! For this, we may forgive her someday. But not yet. ;-)
I'm female, work in "tech" and I have professional experiences that sometimes make me think about going back to school or finding work in a different field. These experiences may not be representative of other women's experiences, but I think they can at least shed some light on why it may be so hard for women to succeed in "tech" fields.
I am the only female UNIX sysadmin that I know of at a fairly large company that is getting larger as each day passes, and I feel fairly isolated. I'm not sure if it is because I work in an office that is not at the company headquarters or if it is because I am the only female doing server administration. Perhaps it is a combination of the two.
I never really intended on being a sys admin or even doing anything with computers to begin with. Since junior high school I've been somewhat of a computer geek, but I've always considered my interest in computers as a side interest or a hobby. I never seriously thought that I'd actually use computers more than a tool to help me in whatever other field I chose to go into. Anyway, as (good) luck would have it, I did have an opportunity to actually try it out, and by even more good luck I became a sysadmin.
This field is very male-dominated, as is my department. It is pretty intimidating to me, as I'm fairly new to systems adminstration and I don't feel very confident in my skills all the time. However, I don't really feel like an all-male environment is the easiest environment for me to get the support I need to to feel like I can succeed at my job. I never felt a need for that kind of support before, even though I worked or had classes in mostly-male environments. Surprisingly, it is one of the things I wish I had at work now more than anything. I am lucky that I have a pretty good manager, but sometimes I really wish there was another woman at this company who understands what I am going through.
Also, I feel that I do have people skills, but I actually don't get an opportunity to use them very often at work, as most of my dealings are with servers and not with customers. I enjoy interacting with people and helping people and that is one thing I feel that is lacking with my job. I really enjoy helping people and making sure that they are happy. I guess I might be able to attribute that "people" side of my to the fact that I'm female--I'm not sure. However, it is another thing that makes me feel dissatisfied with my job.
So, I guess in summary I would just like to say that it is pretty frustrating when you feel like you're the "only one" and you feel as though no one else would really understand your feeling of isolation. Sometimes it's enough to make me want to find something else to do, even though I really the general field I'm in and I think I'm fairly intelligent and quick-to-learn things. I'm still hanging in there because I want to succeed at this and because it's something I'm interested in, but honestly, it is not easy. -a
I can see the segfault poll choices already.
Somehow, I don't think she's the best possible example of a True Computer Geek... I have nothing but scorn for the fools who invented and/or championed COBOL.
Ok, for the record:
In my high school years, I continued to find enjoyment math and science classes, but not all my female classmates did. My high school had a pretty good science program (i.e., more challenging == more difficult), but many girls decided not take them. They have been raised in a totally different world--their view of better life was to find a handsome and rich man. Any study and work was done because of this ultimate goal, so, they think, "why bother with all these difficult courses when I can easily get into arts?" (Not to offend anyone in arts; that's just the way they think/thought.) I'm not sure if that has anything to do with how they were raised by their parents, but I've seen a strong tie in many cases.
There was a smaller group of girls who had passion for sciences and math. So of them chose to go into nursing, others in pure sciences. Engineering and/or computer didn't fit into the picture. I had the same feeling that "engineering and computers are for men." I didn't know why back then. Probably has something to do with the strong association with geekiness. Today, I still don't know why.
As for computers, I remembered my first programming experience was moving the turtle around in LOGO, when I was around 10. Then I had a taste of BASIC a year or two later. I took two computer courses in high school, taught in QBASIC and HyperCard, and that was about all the programming experiences I had before I got into University of Waterloo--doing CS. However, the lack of programming experiences was never a problem in my first year. In fact, I enjoyed all my CS courses just like I enjoyed my first junior high math class.
I can't really imagine being the only female student in a CS class, because to me, it doesn't matter. I've worked in a few high-tech companies, worked in engineering environment with virtually no female engineers, and I had no problem with that. However, sometimes it feels lonely when I'm hanging out with a group of female friends. Even though we could talk about their favorite actor or the latest fastion, I can't tell them how excited I am when I fixed a bug, nor how I think ___ is a great Linux distro (name taken off to avoid distro war). That's when I turn to male friends. But then, I couldn't talk about the handsome guy I met last night, or how I found that lovely skirt at a bargain price. (I'd stay away from a man if he shows great interest in these 'girly' topics tho.) Hence, I'd really like to find some close female friends who are about as comfortable with and literate in computers and programming as I am, yet still has a Real Life(TM).
To wrap things up, I'm really grateful that I have a good mother. When I become a mother later in my life, I'll try very hard to teach my kids that female can be as competent as male (and vice versa) in almost any field. I know it can be done, because I have a role model.
Thanks Mom! (Too bad she doesn't read /.)
(that tune is off Rave Til Dawn, sung by a man of course. A woman wouldn't understand the song/rant)
Anyway, domination has very little to do with intelligence one way or the other. However, domination as a strategy does work when there are a large number of players. The reason there are a jillion different standards for peripherals in the marketplace is that everyone is trying to get the upper hand... and getting the upper hand doesn't have to do with technical excellence, it has to do with domination.
Domination in technical fields means, for example: when you're little or trying to gain market share, gang up with the other little guys and proclaim the big guys aren't standards-compliant. When you're big, embrace and extend.
Bill Gates isn't just smart, he also understands how to dominate. There are many people who could have wound up in his position, but none of them are women. Women don't understand domination.
but just as everywhere they just dont make too much noise. I work in a german publishing company and they key product manager for Linux Books is a girl. When the big guys told her to put a commercial banner on our website she placed a KDE banner for free (www.franzis.de)and fooled the Big Bosses. I think there are a lot of Linux Babes out there wich arent actually hacking the kernel but keep the spirits up in the background. Actually it was her who got me into Linux.
I can't say I find the excuses for the lack of female geeks very convincing in this context. Open source hacking is a fairly solitary work, done solo or by collaboration over the network. There is not that much interpersonal communication or body parts involved in writing software. I would imagine that such a hobby would be even easier to break into than other formerly male-dominated endeavors. Surely traditional excuses centering around environment or encouragement fizzle here, when women have entered other environments without problems.
One who loves to write free software should not need to be "encouraged" or "pushed" into it. The love of the craft, the chance to create complex and beautiful things from pure thought and will is enough reward. One should not need to break into any secret circle of practitioners: this is open source, where code and tools are freely available. One should not need approval from peers: they won't stop your typing fingers or tamper with your Internet connection. Just go. Do it, and do it because you love it.
Yet another obligatory cheap shot, though meant in good humor.. ;)
I can see why someone found this so amusing.. Anyone else see the cute little error in this sentence? Hee hee..
~ Kish
When I read this article, I had to reply. I've been reading /. for about a year everyday now and I've been using Linux for almost a year also. I can truly say that I'd use Linux over any other OS out there. I hate M$ with a passion. I work full time as a Sys Admin and enjoy it tremendously. I don't think I've ever met another female that has used Linux and it's quite disappointing to me that even most females I know barely can make their way around Winblows. I'm really curious as to why this is? I don't know if I really believe that it's because we weren't exposed to it early on. I didn't even really get into computers until four years ago. I think most of us female geeks just don't want all the attention we would get if we actually attended a local LUG meeting since there would probably (maybe) be only one other female there. I like attention, but not that much. And contrary to popular belief, female geeks aren't social outcasts, in fact some of us are very attractive:) (not that I have a huge ego, but that's what I'm told) I read that article a few weeks ago about LinuxChix and it's a good idea, but personally I would never attend a meeting. I don't feel that just because I'm a minority in the computer world that I need to have my own special group and make everyone praise us because we're a minority and get all kinds of publicity. I'd rather see a good mix of both sexes at the local LUG meetings. And also more women (including me) should respond to the postings on /. and not use a unisex or male handle but make it actually known that females actually do read and comprehend this stuff and are very interested in it! And for heaven sakes don't post it Anonymously! Just remember, we don't do this to get dates, we actually do enjoy this stuff and want to get more females involved in using Linux. And also contrary to popular belief, there are intelligent females that are interested in computers out there, they are just few and far between! We do have our own opinions and are not afraid to voice them! So I will end with posing this question: What can local LUG's do to entice females to come to their meetings?
You're probably thinking of Tom C's perl power tools, http://language.perl.com/ppt/.
James
Well..I'm studying CS at the Institute of Tech here in Lund, Sweden. We have around 14-15% girls,
and according to older students it's more or less raising every year. But as it seems to be everywhere else to, we're the part of the school with the least number of girls.
The problem is that the entire field of computing is a "boys club" (actually, this generally applies to most technical fields and physical sciences as well, which is sad). This attitude is perpetuated by the majority of the members of the field. Technically savvy people tend to be condescending to those who are less savvy, and have little patience for explaining to those who need assistance. And that's why we have such a bad reputation (can anyone say BOFH?). If you want to know what's driving away the women, here's your answer: it's us. You have to make the field more hospitable and attractive to outsiders if you don't want to drive them away. 'Nuff said.
umm what about that lame cow from #unix on EFNET who kicks everyone for idling.... I THOUGHT SHE WAS SUPPOSETA BE COOL or sumthin hehe Dianora or sumthin lame... prozac g0bbler
Neo: you're *that* Trinity? I thought you were a guy...
Trinity: Most guys do.
...visibility is low because people assume that neutral names or unnameds are men.
Given the response to women around--aside from "oh my god it's a girl, GET HER!!" there's also "oh my god it's a girl, RUN AWAY!"--it's easier to let people assume you're a guy, sometimes.
Why force our little girls to worry their pretty little heads about such things as linked lists and Beowulf clusters? Just make sure they don't eat too much so all they have to do is wear nice, short skirts and attract a wealthy husband. That way everyone is happy.
Brought to you by someone with too much time on his hands and the letter Q.
In general girls are not the sort of computer users that explore. They often learn what they need to, but rarely learn more for the fun of it.
In addition, in general computers do not appeal to them. They prefer more social interactions. In general geeks like the logic and impersonality of computers. Most girls inherently don't. This is not so much an issue of girls being excluded as that they naturally have little interest in computers.
That said, I am a girl who uses linux. I also find it very difficult to deal with other girls when it comes to computers. They seem to think differently then I do about many of these things.
I will however make the point that the utter lack of girls in linux can be kind of frustrating. It irritated me no end when a new lug member asked whose girlfriend I was. And wasn't joking.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/love.ht
There are plenty of smart of women out there. I don't see anything wrong with them simply not being an engineer/hacker/code monkey. There are plenty of them thriving in market/sales/management/other fields like medicine -- making more money worrying about other problems.
Sure, I do my share of encouraging young girls to be interested in science. But whatever they choose is their business. As long as they don't drop out of school or get pregnant at 17, and they have "independence" drilled into their heads, it's fine.
Now for all of you (heterosexual) geek guys who are too immature or completely lack the social skills to get a date with a real woman(geek girl or non-geek girl), stop whining and go seek alternatives. :) :)
There aren't that many, but there are a few. Where I work, I know of at least two women who work on my floor (of about 60 people) who have IT-related degrees. At least two more are engineers. I find most of the women in my organization are project managers (which is no easy profession, really) but since my organization is very technical in nature, most are at least competent in understanding technical details, even if they aren't IT people or engineers themselves.
:) Drop me an e-mail :)
In my industry, though, there are LOT of women who are engineers. I'd say the ratio is not quite 50/50, but maybe 60/40. (I hold the same respect for engineers that I do IT people. Both fields are HIGHLY technical in nature and many engineers are competent hackers).
Oh yeah, and for female Linux hackers, check out LinuxChix I'm sure its a good start anyways.
Personally, I'd like to meet a few female hackers. Especially if they're hot...
My journal has hot
I actually got emailed by one woman in 4 years of producing open source software. It's so rare that I don't normally ponder over the all male audience as much as years ago. It seems only 40 year old ex-brah burners have any desire to manage technological operations while the 20 year old students all live to follow a husband. Only in the top 5% of the nations colleges do you start to see 1 or 2 20 year olds pursuing their dad's careers.
okay.. whatever.. there are "geek girls" out there.. i can attest to being a huge one... now i don't know what everyone is talking about.. but there are chicks who not only can use a computer, but take it apart, put it back together.. network it with whatever.. write programs for it.. etc..etc.. and yes, even play with linux on it!!
but you also have to keep in mind one thing... girls grow up with the image that they should concentrate on boys, makeup and shopping.. not networking, programming and linux.. i know from experience that, if you play with computers, you're kid of an outcast for not being the way everyone else is...
And, where do we go from here?
I'm concerned that this question is asked for either political reasons or because some male geek is lonely and frustrated that there just doesn't seem to be enough women geeks out there who can understand and appreciate him.
Neither of these reasons for asking is worthy of an answer.
Debating this question on Slashdot would likely lend credence to stereotypes. We don't really want to address some problem here. Mostly, I'm concerned that we want support for our biases.
If someone was seriously asking these questions and was prepared to do some serious cognitive studies that would actually add to human understanding, I might feel differently.
If you are a lonely and frustrated person and feel you are underappreciated by women, don't get involved in too much self-pity. Men have had this problem for as long as there have been women. Recognize that it may be you who needs to understand the women around you better in order to get closer to them. I've known a lot of men who are difficult to get to know and then complain that nobody will befriend them. A lot of it's an act out of fear of interaction and failure. Get over it. One of the reasons that geekiness is sometimes associated with Autism is that geeks can be self-absorbed, petty children who want the world to turn around them. I would recommend that you take steps to fight this stereotype and to make sure that you do not become a real life representation of 'Autistic' behavior.
I'd imagine it's a taught thing, though, and not a born thing. I know plenty of guys with similar traits; no interest at all in CS except that it pays well.
No exploratory spirit or wonder at technology. Just irritation that it doesn't work.
For many that's fine. They aren't CS majors, and computers are a tool, like a pen or a bookshelf, to organize data and communicate with others.
I don't know how to change things. I'd love it when I had my own daughter if she were interested in computers. They seem so wondrous, in their ability to simulate Reality Itself(tm).
Still, that's a long way from now, and I do have other issues to deal with. Dinner.
Good luck, both as a CS major and as a female CS major! Um, I didn't know they had computers in Maryland =)
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
You can't force anyone to do anything. But I think it's important that we don't consciously or unconsciously exclude them as well, which I strongly believe our culture in the US does.
:P
There isn't something that can be done for the immediate present, but that can be done for the future. What, exactly, I haven't figured out yet, but if it's a problem, it can be solved =)
Male engineerspeak.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
4) Inherent differences between men and women.
Most women see computers as tools. As means to an end. Not a toy. Not a world to be explored.
They learn better from other people. In general when girls learn a new program it's because a friend was using it. And they learn how to use it from their friend. They dislike RTFMing.
In Comp-Sci classes they're often determined to memorize how to use computers. Rather then learning what a directory tree is, they end up learning "If I type cd I will go to where I belong. If I type cd project1 it will take me to my projects."
They dislike the impersonality of computers. While most geeks enjoy entering a world where many social distictions are not important, and many social skills are un-needed they don't. Personally I like the cold logic of a computer. It makes sense. Most girls don't seem to like this though. They tend to find cold logic boring.
Anyway, sorry for the rant, but it's my pet peeve.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
I'll probably get moderated like crazy, but let me say this. Everyone has an equal opportunity to contribute, everyone is encouraged equally. Linus said it best "show me the code" No excuses should be made.
Women are just as capable of doing this kind of stuff, if there are less of them doing it, it's because they don't want to. Not because society says so.
Don't make excuses. If you don't want to contribute because you're male, female, purple, or pink, I don't care. No one cares, when it comes down to it, what matters is what you DO. Not your reasons for not doing it.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
Now all I have to do is get married, have kids, and raise a daughter =)
Seriously, though, (junior|middle) high school tutoring programs seem a very attractive thing to pursue, and no I am not a pedophile. Or a cradle robber. But I seriously do think there is something wrong in my society.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
If anything I think girls are being encouraged too much to go into computers. An awful lot of the girls in Comp-Sci don't belong there. They seem to be unable to learn about computers on their own. They frequently sit down and memorize the commands they need, without any real understanding. It's sad when someone's majoring in CS and can't navigate a directory tree. Or doesn't know what ftp is.
Far to many girls with no interest or talent in CS are being encouraged to go into it. I really don't consider that a good thing.
The girls with real interest in CS are drawn to it on their own. They have independent interest in CS, and don't need encouragement.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
What you don't seem to understand, and I find this a lot, is that if men treated women like we treat each other, you would be facing a whole lot more ridicule, ego bashing, and all those things that you feel men put off on women unfairly because they are women. In reality, men tone down these things for women because they are sensitive to them.
Many men do consciously restrain themselves from abusing women, I'll give you that. It may even be true that many men really do go easy on women most of the time.
Women do have to put up with a heap of shit from guys though -- whether they are in male-dominated or predominantly female professions -- power relations, whether they be hierarchy or mob, generally (avoid absolute statements here, the times they are a-changing) place men above women. It's a good bet that if women are treated fairly in your workplace, they are doing jobs as important as men, for the same pay, and aren't considered "unusual". Women attempting to enter traditional men's arenas (heavy industry, police or military, engineering, or any place which simply hasn't included women before) have to put up with a lot of intolerance, which may take the form of sexual harassment or fake "blokey" caramaderie.
The reason men's reaction to change-room humour and taunts is different from women's is that to them, it isn't a threat. It's more of an affirmation; the power relations involved are known and relatively equal.
But if you treat a woman surrounded by men in the same way as you treat a man surrounded by men, it *is* different. She *is* threatened. She's an outsider. She has different equipment, has been accultured differently, has probably always been marked out as different (from other girls and from boys), and her position in the group is far from secure.
Do not underestimate men's insecurity. For many, many years men have been income-earners while women have been financially dependent upon them; in a workplace traditionally dominated by men the men are well aware that there are lots of women who *could* do their jobs, possibly better, possibly for less money (yes, even now. The women have less experience, don't they?). The first few women are the thin end of the wedge.
Yes, ridicule, physical torture, condescending attitudes, and the like *DO* happen towards women, but they do not happen with any more frequency than they happen to other men and in fact happen to a much lesser degree.
Half true. Ethnic cleansing consists in murdering the men and then raping the women. Such consideration! Treatment is *radically* different under violent circumstances -- and when violence is neither necessary nor prudent, power relations still have different ways of suborning women and men.
But half untrue. Day-to-day domestic violence is much more common than street crime, and much more common against women than men. Domestic violence is about maintaining a man's dominance in the home, often when his position outside it is threatened or he is already on the bottom of the heap.
And of course you mustn't forget that it is *men* who harrass, *men* who rape and beat, *men* who are behind the M16s in Latin America and Indonesia. The comrades of these men, the pack they hunt with, are *not* victims. The victims are outsiders, be they defenceless civilians, wives, prostitutes or women in the workplace.
There *is* something wrong with any movement devoted to free choice that excludes half the population.
There *is* something wrong with a culture where 50% of the population "chooses" to be excluded. Exclusion is never a choice, it's an imposition -- girls are discouraged from birth from technical inquisitiveness. This is an error; but the error and the sad fact that for many adult women it seems already "too late" (I have no idea if it really is too late; I hope not) is something which men and women interested in freedom have a serious interest in analysing and correcting.
Jonathan
An awful lot of the early hackers didn't have any community that helped them out. They weren't encouraged to go into computers. No one cared. And they did anyway. It's interesting how few women did.
From what I've heard of the new CS students here, that's not unique to the girls :)
On the other hand, as stated several times above...girls need encouragement in their formative years. They need to be taught _not_ to be frightened of math and technology, as opposed to the other way around.
By high school they've been taught to be uninclined toward exploring for themselves. At that point, steering 'em towards CS is a really unwise idea. (shrug) This goes for the students who think that "CS is about web design" as well as anyone who doesn't really care much for the topic but is there because it seems lucrative.
Anyone who's uninclined to play around with a topic needs to not be in the subject at all (All my own opinion of course).
I see it much more frequently among the girls personally.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
(shrug) Like I said, I'm not in CS myself. It may be more prevalent in the women in CS... but again, look at the trends: women are taught to be scared to do things extracurricularly (with science, math, CS)...
Then they're pointed to technology 'cause it's lucrative, there's high demand, and of course women can do anything they want, right? 'Cause obviously we all go into high school with no preconditions...
I have thus far personally met one other girl in CS that I didn't feel some amount of contempt for. In general they are incompetant, and not really interested in learning. They're the ones that as seniors still go "I hate UNIX, it's scary."
Executive Summary:
;).
;).
;).
;).
;). Nah there's another reason. ).
;) ).
;). So don't take yourself too seriously.
Men tend to have bigger egos and overconfidence. This causes more of them to try stuff (whether stupid or not). A lot fail, but we only see the ones that succeed big time (or fail big time). This means we notice more men.
This is true for Open Source and much other stuff. You don't see those that write mediocre code right?
Of course this is not a road map to success for an individual person- you have a finite lifespan, fail too often and it's gone. Fail in a bad way and it's gone immediately
Main:
You can talk about discrimination till you go blue, but I don't think that's it. There are TONS of people who are and were discriminated against but they manage and some even thrive!
Look at the Jews they've encountered substantial discrimination. They are doing very well, they are at the top of media, finance, science and other places of power.
Over here, people of my race are discriminated against in various quotas for the benefit of the majority, and so far it seems to have made us better at what we do, whereas more of the majority race have become slackers. Heh you want to breed a better race, persecute them, but DO NOT wipe them all out. It's just like breeding supergerms
The fact is men and women are different. Guys seem to be born with tendencies to having bigger egos.
This bigger ego has certain effects. If people/circumstances tell a guy that he's wrong, he will still persist. And if he's finally proven right, then he makes sure everybody knows about it, he becomes famous or at least notorious. If he's finally wrong, he's just lost in the shadows of history. Same for starting businesses, open source projects. Also applies to driving round and round in circles
That big ego is also why men chat up women even when most people don't think it's a good idea. But hey they may be descendants of those who succeeded against all odds...
It's genetic: if their parents didn't try to have sex, they are unlikely to either
Someone quoted Admiral Grace Hopper as basically saying don't ask permission, just do it, apologising is easier than getting permission. Same kind of thing. That shows there's an Admiral Hopper, she had that confidence.
By the way, this "Just do it" doesn't work for everything. I don't recommend it for sexual behaviour (then again it may explain why I'm still a virgin
Of course if she had that confidence and nothing else, there won't be an Admiral Hopper, but who would know? You only see and remember success (unless you are so successful at failing
Think of the millions of sperm persisting- many in wrong directions. It just takes one to be right, and you get something.
Confidence when you KNOW you are right helps. And MORE importantly enough confidence when you THINK you are right helps even more. Why? So that you can continue on to find out whether you are right after all or wrong! You learn! Look at those people who can barely bring themselves to touch a computer, and who jump at the slightest beep.
Careful though, overconfidence and too big an ego means you don't learn from others, and other people's mistakes. You might just be one of the 999,999 confident sperm who went the wrong way.
And sometimes you don't succeed coz of "barriers"
May God smile on us all,
And try not to laugh too hard.
Be good and have fun!
Link.
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Well, it may be true that girls are pushed towards the flowery tea party type games when young, but that doesn't mean they have the market cornered on socialization. :-) :-)
There're a LOT of guys here, right? By posting comments and asking questions, you GUYS are socializing in much the same way as girls do, only using computer stuff as your interface for conversation.
Local user's groups and LAN parties, hello!!!
I think there are still al lot of gender role issues being worked out in teh engineering/compsci fields, but they are fading fast. There's MONEY to be made online, and greed knows no gender boundaries.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
One does not learn to love something like coding. I don't mean just being a techie, but actually working on open source which is what this topic is about. I know women who are pushed into computer science, which appears the reverse of what you experienced. What cannot be pushed, however, is the love of the code itself. A friend with an MS in CS still cannot comprehend why I would actually code for fun. For her, it's a job. Another friend with a CS degree -- for all the encouragement from the powers that be -- bailed out of programming as soon as she could. Lots of women happily take up technical degrees and occupations, but that is not the question here. To actually love to code and do it as a hobby -- you don't seem to be in this category either -- is what this topic is about, and that does not and cannot be taught.
Who cares? I could really care less about the gender of those involved in OSS and FS.
But I would like to thank all those women involved in the Free Porn Community. You rule.
AC
Among other things, originated the IP masquerading code. Here is her home page.
Amen! We arent encourage to use our intelligence for anything other than using markers effectively...
I wonder if these chicks are pretty enough for us to pih-poh with them..
All the web links aside... all the poppycock and BS aside... In the free world...the only one holding you back is yourself be you male or female... I've met many "victims" who actually set themselves up for it... so many of these youngsters...both guys and girls get out into the real world and despite what they are told by the liberal media...GUESS WHAT??? Guys and Girls are DIFFERENT!!!! OH MY!! OH NO!! NOT THE SCARY TRUTH!!!! I've known some great female hackers and some that just plain sucked..... same with the guys...in the end either you have a passion for this business or you do not. Let's get on to better more productive talks.... like about file systems design... [ I hate to say it but /. is getting more sophmoric all the time. IMHO ]
I tend to agree here. Women do not have a mind for engineering. It's a biological fact.
Uhh, there is a sexy woman that sits in the cube next to me while I admin UNIX... She writes awk code and everything to administer her DB's. I see attractive women who are proficient in computers fairly often. You just don't live in a densely populated enough area.
When I was young they did the same stuff to me. They are guidance counselors! They are trying to ensure that you have a good semester!!! Just because they are average intelligence and can't understand that some people do calculations for fun. When I was in school my intelligence was highly underestimated... and I'm a white male and I know plenty more white males that the same thing has happened to. Just because your a woman or a minority doesn't automatically mean that they think you are stupid. They just don't want to put to much pressure on you though you may like it. Freaks.
Ellen Spertus wrote a paper titled "Why are There so Few Female Computer Scientists?". This was in 1991, but I don't think anything substantial has changed. (This, BTW, is a woman with a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.)
I know the question is more about women in open-source projects than computer science, but people don't get involved, typically, with any kind of computer project (open source or otherwise) unless they've got the technical know-how to do so.
Anyways, the main points in her paper about why women don't get into computer science are:
- Societal Factors. Such as women being discouraged from technical fields, mathematics, science and other "male" fields when they're children or in school.
- Masculine Environment. That is, a lot of computer related workplaces or college classes have mostly men, and therefore a tendency for there to be things that some women would find offensive (sexist or sexual humour or female pin-ups, for example). Also, men use sarcasm or insults to communicate more often that women, often leaving women feeling as if the environment is hostile even when it isn't really. Different interests (sports, for example) can also leave women feeling less socially included.
- Gender-biased language.
- Some attempts to encourage women into these sorts of fields actually backfire, for instance making it seem as if women are less capable and that's why they might need extra help. (This can be subtle and the exact same thing could be interepreted differently by two different people.)
The paper goes into much more detail, however, including reasons why biology is probably not very much of a factor and some possible solutions.If you read that paper I think you'll see that it relates fairly well to this topic.
I think a whole lot of fuss is being made about the women in IT here on Slashdot. There seems to be a feeling that the women are grossly under-represented in IT. However, that is not the case in India where I come from. All the IT firms that I worked for in India had a representation of about 50-50 for both the sexes and having associated with a large number of female programmers, I must honestly say that there hasn't been any noticeable difference in the way women and men code and neither is there a difference in the percentage of morons vs the accomomplished in either sex.
But there is one difference in the attitude of the women vs the men. That is the fact that most women see programming as a job while a far greater percentage of men see programming as a means of accomplishing something greater and not just as a job. As for whether having seperate distros for women - I think the idea stinks and I find it very sexist and very exclusivist..like in the old days where they had the mens only hunting clubs. I can see where this might lead to - what about a distro for teenage boys, another for teenage girls.. and a another for geriatric folks... Come on!
Just a thought. I think what's been observed is not something exclusive to the Open Source community. Relative lack of female participation extends to the computing industry, and for a large part (though not so much now) anything very technical in nature. The roots of what's happening now predates even the invention of computers, and it's something society has to (and is) tackling as a whole.
At our school the men:women ratio is more like infinite:null
:-(
It might be that a part of the reason that so many guys are geeks is that they feel insecure around women, and others, and feel more comfortable around computers as a computer can't reject you or judge you. (What about you ladies, did a feeling of not fitting in drive you towards computers?)
So, maybe part of the solution lies in assisting everyone to integrate better through adolescence.
She has a command of the English language more or less comparable to mine (that is, neither of us have to "dumb down" our conversation for the other.. though we once in a while stray into vocabulary the other hasn't been exposed to before), she also (like me, but unlike the rest of the Internet) can't stand people who abbreviate words and use alternate spellings like a warez d00d (I won't bore you with examples =), and has actually expressed an interesting in learning about programming. (I can not even /begin/ to express how unnaturally hard it is to find someone who is extremely creative, interesting, fun, intelligent, etc.)
Of course, I want to learn more about different /human/ languages, and she's fluent in a few. So it works out nicely. Hee hee..
Anyway, I don't know about any other hackers, but I personally don't drool around and lust after women (not to say I don't like women ;).. But then again, I suppose I'm a little more eloquent (and otherwise sensible..?) than many people I know. Which is to say, most males /and/ females I know really have no business looking for a date until they finally figure out how to treat a romantic interest (or a person in general.. is it just me or do people seem exceptionally selfish and self-centered, uncaring, etc. these days?). And trust me, I've heard females say things just as "sexist" or whatever term you care to use as any male. It's a human being issue, not a male (geek or not) thing. ;)
~ Kish
(Appologies in advance for my spelling- lisdexia rears its ugly head...)
It seems that the "geek" community hasn't done any better than society at large at making girls welcome. Could it be that all that societal pressure that forces girls into the classic "cuteness" mold does just as good of a mind job on the guys? It seems that even as we clamor for more geeky girls that we can identify with, we're still a little threatened by any girl that can hack it as well as we can. Seems like you ladies just can't win, and the people who should understand the best just don't understand at all.
i'm curious that no one answered (one of) the original questions about whether there are any female open source developers. i remember being disappointed to find that Selena Sol and Gisele (sp?) Aas were male, but surely there must be some women out there making a contribution that specialized geeks like those that read slashdot can remember. if not, i may just have to do something about it (well, i may have to do something about it in any case 8)
I come from a farming family. I'm giving it up to computers. I'd rather wade through nice clean(ish) junk mail than a cows wastage any morning. Theres no money in moo moos in the UK these days anyway. Then again... theres no money in gnu moos in the computing sense either.
At college we have three girls in our course. Last year there were 2, but these things happen. Theres about 15 of us left altogether. I haven't got a clue what the reasons for this are, but the majority of girls in this college seem to be doing 'Beauty Therapy' type courses. They go around in little white dresses - and even most are not blonde, umm.. well its a synonym.
A slightly idealist comment...
As a general discrimination "thing", *why* must there be 50% male/female ratios in linux, *why* must there be equal proportions of coloured / white / ethnic (whatever) in business, *why* do people seem to think 1/(total_number_of_options) in general, as though everyone were the same??
If females don't like linux, they don't have to use it. If a female wants to get into linux, it's here & waiting. We don't have to have a 'gurlLinux' (whatever the heck that is) for the purpose, do we?
How's about instead of having to live in an "equal-opportunity" world we had "equal-ineptitude"? That strikes me as more fair...
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Now I'll start with a little personal anecdote.
At my (high-powered, single-sex) school, when I was in the 6th Form (last year before university, for non-UK types), there were 60 girls in my year who were specialising in science subjects. That's 60 young women, who were studying combinations of Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. 3 of us went on to take Engineering at college (and 1 dropped out after the first year), _40_ (ish) studied medicine; and they didn't all have strong medical vocations. (I don't think anyone did computing from that year -- I was probably the closest with microelectronics)
So why isn't computing/engineering a natural choice for these people, who should be potential recruits?
This argument comes up all the time in the IEE (institute of electrical engineers) journal; viz. why isn't engineering seen as a natural choice for kids who are capable of it. My experience is that teachers don't especially encourage it -- they like to push pure science or medicine as more rewarding. (My guess is that this is because most of them have no clue what engineers do) The people who are most likely to go on to study these subjects are the ones who independently gained an interest at home, rather than at school.
Also, don't think that knowing you are going to be the only girl in a class of at least 100 students isn't an off-putting factor. How many teenagers like to feel that they fit into a social group? For male proto-geeks, this is fine. They'll be mixing with their own kind. For girls, it's just another example of how far they are straying from what society expects -- ie. lack of female examples just turns it into a vicious circle. It means that a girl has to be really dedicated to even think of these options -- they will not naturally occur, and may not even be suggested by careers advisors.
Also, science/math minded girls are going to be far more attracted by other options as long as most people have no clue what engineers do, or how it might be useful to society as a whole. (cf. medicine, frex) Greed is not everyone's overarching desire at the age of 16-18, when you make these career defining dcisions.
I suspect that as more and more networking technology makes it into 'normal' households, girls will be more likely to have played with kit at home -- and remember that girls mature more quickly than boys. We're brighter at 8-12 than you losers :):) Catch the girls then and you have them.
She designed COBOL! Ecch! For this, we may forgive her someday. But not yet. ;-)
Actually IIRC she simply managed a group of people, that tends to be the kind of job an admiral has anyway...
In my experience, most of the true "geeks" I've met are remarkably open-minded about such things. Just reading the previous posts has confirmed my beliefs; most of us care...we may differ on the hows and the whys, but I haven't seen any "women belong in the kitchen"-type posts.
The problem is that most of the people that the rest of the world interacts on a daily basis are non-geeks. And it's these non-geeks that hold the myths about where men and women belong most dearly.
Don't get me wrong...I'm not saying that every non-geek holds these old world ideals, just that those ideals are mostly prevalent outside the geek community. And since our lot in life generally keeps us from having impact on people when they're most impressionable, there's little "we" can do about it, except keep welcoming women into the fold with open arms.
"UNIX" is never having to say you're sorry.
It is also my sneeking suspicion that part of why there are so many more men in geekdom is an unfairness to boys. There's immense pressure on males of all ages to pursue only "worthwhile" activities, those careers which manifest the tokens of success in our society and convey status. As it happens, engineering and computer programming fall into that heap. Thus (goes my hypothesis) many more young boys are exposed to geekdom, and encouraged, even pressured, to participate in it.
You know, that just gave me an idea for another hypothesis. Many male geeks (myself included) are terrible at sports, or just don't like sports. Nobody would argue that boys are not pressured to excel in sports in the U.S. The problem is, not everyone is good at sports (or even wants to be).
Computing is in many ways like most competitive sports. It has ideas of conquest and victory. You can demonstrate ability and be better than your peers, who will admire you for it. Perhaps there are so many male geeks because so many boys need computing as an alternative to sports. Gods, I hate to think that school athletics might have actually been good for something but it's certainly an interesting idea.
This makes me wonder, with so many girls becoming involved in school sports because of Title Nine, and increasing pressure to do so from their soccer moms and enthusiastic sports fan peers, will we start to see more girl geeks who see computing as an alternative? Hmmm, I always thought Title Nine was a very good thing, but this is even better than I imagined!
... perhaps you don't even realize it. Women are participating, women are interested, but only the women that: a) are looking for the attention that you get from participating in a field with a high ratio of men to women (yes, I know I'm going to catch it for that statement) or b) women who are determined to ignore insults, condescending behavior, being slighted, and propositions from Tom, Dick *and* Harry, to be active in a field that interests them.
I have been working in hardware support for a number of years, for very large companies with household names (who will remain nameless) and for smaller companies that you may not have heard of. But my experience was much the same. BOTH men AND women looked at me very skeptically when I announced to them that I was there to repair their workstation, their server, their printer, whatever. Every now and then a woman would give me a smile and said it was nice to see a woman in the field. More often than not, though, they wanted to know what my credentials were before they felt comfortable to let me do my job.
So think about it, if you're at work and a twenty-something redhead appears to replace your hard drive, how would YOU react? And now that the open source community needs to expand its user base, you're asking where all the women are? We are non-verbally (and verbally) reminded that this is a man's field, (ok maybe not by you, but I'm sure you can think of a friend who has not treated a woman colleague as an equal)... Perhaps you should think more seriously about how much you encourage/allow the women you know to participate, as equals, in your interests (and theirs).
I can really relate to what Sparkles was saying in her reply. I am a girl, and I can tell you that regardless of what people say to other people... Girls, are not always given a warm welcome in the bruhaha of technology and men. Girls are given the impression still that playing with dolls, doing your hair, and painting your face along with gossip and getting with guys is the way to go. How many magazines do you see with painted ladies on the cover in skimpy clothes? What a wonderful image to give to us?
However, this is more about gals and technology. Guys are nurtured to explore more fields dealing with electronics and other fascinating do-dads of Science. I think is important to encourage girls to check out technology and science. The more heads we have working on ideas to advance these fields the more useful and imaginative things we will have at our disposal.
I have been playing with Linux for almost two years. I don't claim to be a professional. However, no more matter how much I feel swamped, I continue to push myself to learn new stuff regarding Linux. I sometimes feel there is no support for me, but it doesn't get me down.
I joined with a couple of people a year ago and formed a LUG. I have learned a lot. We actually got some guys from COREL to come down and talk about what they are doing with Linux. It has been a rewarding experience. I am attempting to teach myself PERL. So there, I would like to think, is a place for us women here, I just hope you guys don't mind our lovely company.
Anyhow, you geek boys especially you Linux are the hottest, smartest, and best to know. I love you guys......
Programmer
particularly in your early, formative years.
Some other posts Ive read so far said that women are usually looked down upon by men when it comes to technical things. For that reason, in Munich, where I live, there is a computer school for women only, and its growing rapidly. My mother teaches there as well as at other places with mixed groups, and she says the atmosphere in the women-only groups is far better.
She says the reasons are that in the presence of men women often get too unsure, and that OTOH many men tend to push themselves to the front for the sole reason of being men.
Personally, Im usually annoyed by women who think they dont understand technical stuff for 2 reasons: first they usually want me to do something for them and second of course they arent. This view is generally accepted at my school among teachers and students, where no teacher would counsel a girl not to take advanced maths or physics (or whatever else) classes for the single reason that she is a girl.
This seems to be different in the US (and in some european countries too, I suppose).
But as a matter of fact I dont know any female geeks or even only computer-interested girls. I dont know the reason for this - maybe they dont see computers as much as a toy as men often do.
No, wait, I know one woman the Munich Linux users group who is very much accepted by all others.
A few years back I read a wonderful book about how smart girls get pulled out of professional life called Smart Girls, Gifted Women. The author, Barbara Kerr, had been one of a studied group of kids (half boys, half girls) in the Kennedy era whose parents were told "your kid is smart. we will pay for them to have the best of everything in school so that we can study their progress and acheivements."
Basically at a highschool reunion, Kerr, who was then working on her PhD in Psychology, realized with a jolt that all of the men in her class had gone on to be highly successful professional types, but only 3 or 4 of the women had. Further more -- most of the women thought on some level that they had been included in the project by mistake. They "weren't really smart". Never mind they'd tested very well very early.
The women descended on her with a demand that she answer some questions. Were we really smart? What happened to us??? Why were we in this program and why did we not do what the study expected. The book is her answer to them.
Anyhow, to make a long story short, Kerr found what every geek girl here knows. All kinds of subliminal pressures tell girls from a very young age that they should spend their talents on being well socialized and pleasant as opposed to anything else they might have been interested in.
The book lists ways in which a parent of a smart girl can recognize a girl who is failing to reach her potential and things you can do to help her. I read this thing and it really hurt. I saw myself and things that had happened to me over and over again. At the same time it was validating -- ok, there's a reason we girls end up being all alone out there in the sciences as kids.
Anyhow, if you have daughters, go see if you can find this book. It's out of print, but copies were easy to come by last I checked. The world is kinder to geek women than it used to be, but it could use some help and this is a place to start helping.
Scrappy
As I said, it was meant in good jest. I wasn't trying to be cold. :)
Too true.. just about everyone excels in a few particular areas above all the others. Frighteningly enough, for me that is writing, creative thought, debate, and other such endeavors that require a strong grasp of the English language, an imagination, and some smarts. ;) I wonder how many other people dislike advanced math (aside from myself?) and still enjoy (and are adept at) coding?
I couldn't really agree with whether or not women are "..." than "..." ever.. Mainly because, well, I'd have had to have been around for quite a bit longer to do a comprehensive case study. Hee hee..
Unlike many (too many, one might say..), I actually like intelligent, confident, self-reliant women (my choice of romantic interest illustrates this perfectly).. Not only that, most of my friends are female (I find most people of the same gender as I to be.. somewhat less than agreeable company most of the time.. I'm not sure why, many women I know are just as immature as many men.. perhaps it's just because they are such in a different way.. or because I only spend time with /intelligent/ women.. ;).
Anyway, on the Internet, I don't usually assume gender either way (well, unless your screen name kind of points it out.. and only then because I don't really feel like second-guessing that kind of thing.. =P).
~ Kish
It is amazing to me to see how many sexist comments have been made here, by people who probably feel their comments are anything but sexist.
Why must supposedly-intelligent people view their world in simplistic dualities anyway? Must everything be us-vs-them to be comprehensible? Pick any significant characteristic of "some people" and I'll have no trouble naming five of either gender that possess that characteristic. (Obviously "possesses {gender-specific part}" isn't eligible for inclusion.)
I'll keep this short, so as to keep rant-mode off. Anything else would undoubtably enter into the realm of ridiculing what others had said already.
Frankly, I don't think you are qualified to answer the
question either, as you are not a programmer. There
are certainly women in IT and
technical fields. The presence of women in my CS
programs and organizations like WITI testify to that.
From this not insignificant group of qualified women,
we should have seen SOME who would be interested in
writing open source stuff. Social pressures, early
discouragement (etc.) do not figure here, because they
are ALREADY programmers. That additional step -- from
"just a job" to "it's a great hobby too" -- is what counts.
There, it is a unilateral decision, neither encouraged
nor discouraged.
It is a pity that little or no attempt has been made to
answer the original question: why are there so few
women in open source projects? There are certainly
enough technically qualified women -- I have met
them -- to start just ONE open source project. It is not
difficult, as I can attest.
Yes, there are women in open source. Yes, there are female hackers. (And I mean hackers in the true old-guard sense of the word for people who love to write code for its own sake and are very good at it, not people who break into someone else's box.)
Normally I don't go too overboard in the ubergeek oneupsmanship, but I think it's called for here to counter the prevailing winds.
I've been hacking open source since before that phrase was fashionable, we used to just call it "free software". Or even "public domain" if we felt like using big words. Most of it runs on Irix (although some has been ported to Linux) because I got addicted to SGIs when they were the only game in town for fast graphics.
I started playing with computers when I was ten, wrote software on my own time for a while, got my first paying computer job when I was 16. I was the youngest employee at ETA systems, a supercomputer company that's now bankrupt (like all the rest of them). I literally remember when I thought Unix was for wimps, an insane waste of expensive supercomputer cycles. If batch job control was good enough for me, it should be good enough for everybody! (So I did see the light on that one, now I'm a rabid Unix fanatic.)
Got a CS degree at Stanford (while taking quite a few feminist studies classes along the way). Went off to work at The Geometry Center, a research group where developing free software was a major part of our mission. Came back to Stanford to get a PhD in CS. Along the way I adapted some research software for use in a free SGI visualization product.
I am used to almost always being the only or one of the few women in the room. One of the few sports I enjoy doing is kickboxing, which is at least as male dominated. I probably wouldn't have chosen to either start or continue with that if I hadn't built up reserves of confidence from my experiences in CS.
I do believe the low percentage of women in CS is due to cultural conditioning, and that the gender imbalance causes professional difficulties ranging from extreme to subtle. Ellen Spertus has several essays on this (which are worthwhile enough that I'll add yet another pointer to them). In my case most of the difficulties have been subtle, and I've benefitted from many mentors from many people over the years. Most of them have been male, but it's worth pointing out that at my first computer job my boss was female as was hers.
-- Tamara
Today I received a learning Linux book called: Easy Linux: See It Done, Do It Yourself! The author is a woman named Lisa Lee. So woman are out there, just a little harder to find. And isn't it the rarer gem that is more precious and valuable?
I have a big bag full of two cents and I'm coming your way.
There are two things that prevent girls from growing up into computer freaks.
As the previous person said, girls are expected to be worried about manners, societal behaviour and presentation more than anything else. Family is numero uno. Career, they are told, is just secondary. (except in rare cases).
Extensive discussions with women in technology tell me that family and such are even today a big hurdle to women's progress in these fields. Most people (incuding women) believe that technology and stuff are part of a man's world. Psychology, pharmacy, nursing, fine arts, homescience etc. are women's fields.
More importantly, even if a girl decides to do it differently and actually try to penetrate that forbidden territory, one has to face it that most men _just_ _dont_ _accept_. For one, there is a sheer lack of female peer-group; two, the male group, not only does not help, but chides! You need tremendous amount of weill power to get over it initially. The blatant discouragement later turns into cautious acceptance; and finally taken to be 'a cheery exception'!
And the solution? Well, you just have to be very lucky to have someone constantly encouraging you. And for your own part, you have to be extremely self-willed. I got lucky with both the above. :))
Experience speaks, guys. Exclusively using Linux for a year now, trust me, I know!
P.S. 'guys' is a uni-gender term. So ladies, do not take offence.
Linuxian Girls of the world, UNITE!
(snip) Also, I notice that girls who profess to be interested in computers rarely are in the same way that most linux users are. (/snip)
Beg to differ, gentlem[a/e]n.
It is indeed a fact that few women use Linux. but remember that those that use came to it 'cos it attracted and appealed and more often than not, struggled against horrible odds to do so succesfully. So they literally swear by it!
That is not the case with men. I can show you any number of men who have picked up and mastered Linux to exploit its open-sourceness to create trade-marked stuff! It is possible given the looseness of GPL. And many of them don't give a damn about Linux itself. They churn out documents in WORD, dammit!
(snip) most girls do not have the personalities to be into computers (/snip)ok, you said 'most', so you escape ;) haha :)) Sincerely, I agree with you. Girls can get so bloody smug! That was the case with me too a few years back...until this man came along and challenged. And it sparked a whole new 'personality', as you call it.
Lady-Linuxian MINI-HOWTOIt is all in the environment. Women need the trust, encouragement and the acceptance. You want more geek-girls? I'll tell you what to do! Pick up the most proud-peahen in the group and tell her in your most dismissing tone, "Linux is not for girls" and watch her go! haha. serious. Just remember to throw in a few "good going, my lady" remarks and she'll be so good you'll start!
Linuxian Girls of the world, UNITE!
One begins to wonder if women believe all the lies that they tell one another, as if euphemisms and diversity training dogma could possibly replace cold hard facts and reasoned debate.
Though the majority of WomEn in America today are incapable of emotionless, logical discourse, try to explain one thing to me. If women are "stronger, smarter, and more beautiful than they have ever been," then why are they more miserable than at any other period of history? Never have I seen a more disgruntled, agitated group of individuals. Why are you so unhappy? You got what you wanted, right? Careers, academic accolades, expensive cars, mortgages, bastard children, and just about everything else on Gloria Steinem's grocery list.
Perhaps it's the fact that all the feminist propaganda you were force fed in the Marxist bastions formerly known as universities has achieved the effect of scaring off members of the opposite sex. All the qualities previously associated with femininity having been rejected as patriarchal brainwashing, you find yourselves coarse, unpleasantly ambitious, and unsubtle. American women have forgotten how to be "Ladies." On the other hand, American men have bent over backwards, even to the extent of handing their own balls over on a platter just to please you. Perhpas you mistake our kindness, and willingness to please you as stupidity...
The funny thing is, even the wholesale generational emasculation of the American male population hasn't made you happy. It's what you wanted, right? Well wouldn't such superior intellects know what they wanted? Hmmm, makes you think.
Now that you've changed your minds, although you haven't quite shared with us exactly how we are now supposed to behave, you are all the more unhappy. Someone who was formerly "Mr. Sensitive," and "Marriage Material" is now a wimp, and spineless.
I'll tell you one thing, American men are pretty fed up with American women, which is why so many of us are marrying foreign women; women who know how to be confident in their femininity, and aren't threatened by our masculinity. A lot of us are choosing the route of celibacy or infrequent dating, which is definitely preferable to decades of alimony and child support payments should you highly intelligent American WomEn catch an episode of Ophra on a bad day.
Regarding the question of whether or not there are women in the open source movement. The answer to that is simple. Now that the money is flowing into Linux, so will the women. Anywhere there's money, there's affirmative action, which by the way rewards white middle class, college educated women far far more than poor inner city blacks.
Should one be so bold as to conduct a demographic survey of corporate America, one would come to the astonishing realization that our offices almost exclusively filled with white females - and what class of men do white-collar females gravitate towards? White collar men of course. However, with the white-collar workforce almost entirely made up of women, (roughly 75 %) there is bound to a shortage of "eligible" bachelors. As a young, white male in the corporate world, I do have quite a few dating opportunities, however, the intellectual poverty of my Gen-X counterparts is distressingly unappealing. However, my lack of interest in the Ophra-fied, hive-minded FeMaLe(s) of America doesn't get in the way of the unending amusement I get from watching them age and grow bitter as JFK Jr. fails to materialize. The most ironic thing about 20 something American women is that they only have to look back a single generation to see their fates. It wasn't long ago that their mothers and aunts chose the same philosophical roads. Perhaps American women could use a bit more wisdom, and a little less "intelligence," hmmmm?
You know, I'm a girl, but I couldn't agree with this particular Anonymous Coward more. I have to say, women have harped and moaned and whined about equal opportunity and what-have-you, and what have they done when they've received it other than to continue to be unhappy and dissatisfied? Bottom line is, if you have merit, based on your skills, your ability to learn and improve, and upon how you present yourself as a person, who cares whether you're a girl or a guy? Whatever I am now, whatever I have achieved in the past, it is all because I simply decided to do so and then put in the work and the commitment necessary in order to achieve whatever goal happened to be at hand. Currently I'm a Sys. Admin because I decided to be one - it hasn't been more difficult because I am a girl, nor have I been given "extra breaks" for the same reason. I work my ass off to learn and improve, and my work is recognized on its merit. Next I'm going to be a Network Engineer, because I want to and because I like plugging vastly disparate pieces of equipment into each other and making them work (generally breaking them in the process and then making them work again). I take all the different end results of all the coding and make all that work together also - not because I'm a girl, not because I'm not a boy, but because that's what I like to do. Even though people seem to bemoan the fact that there aren't more girls in software (hey, it's the same with hardware, believe me) - maybe it's just because not all that many girls WANT to be there. Oh, one more thing. Of COURSE I do Linux, among other platforms. I've gotta say, there are reasons that some male-dominated fields are dominated by males - I used to drive big big trucks, also, and I didn't meet too many girls doing that, although probably more there than in IT. Many to most girls don't think in a way which would make them successful at these kinds of jobs - and the ones of us who do, while still generally being capable of being completely feminine, aren't your typical "girly girl." I like capable, smart women myself - but i've got to say I don't come across them all that often. The trick is, now that women are experiencing the results of all their demands for equality, etc., it is time for women to actually live up to what they've been granted. Some can, many can't. Hence, continued dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Always be careful of what you ask for, because you just might get it.
"Man's reach should exceed his grasp."
There's a good reason for that. Only the stupid guys are sticking around in college. The smart guys are going directly into industry, where there's money to be made right away. It's a boom economy, after all. If you're in college and planning to stick around for your degree, you are either stupid or missing the point.
It's really funny... I see this a lot in women. They are diligent (more so than men), smart, hard working; yet they somehow always manage to completely miss the point. Men don't miss the point. That's why they dominate the tech fields.
The reason I am not interested in the discouragement
that women face in technical fields is that any such
bias is provably surmountable. You are one example. I
have met plenty of women programmers as classmates,
coworkers and in more, err, social circumstances. The
question -- as yet unanswered -- is why such women who
are already programmers do not seem to take prominent
roles in open source projects. They are the proud, the
strong, the ones who conquered all obstacles blah blah.
Right. So why aren't they contributing?
You asked yourself "why is it that so few
women in CS look to CS for entertainment?" That is the
question I have been asking all along. That you have
now ASKED the question is progress. Perhaps you could
answer your own question of why you do not make
a hobby out of your work. When you do that, you will
begin to answer the original question that started
this discussion. Why do already-qualified women not take part
in open source projects?
No wonder men never see women in IT: they always think I'm a man until they hear my voice, just because they can't imagine that a womam can do techsales or system administration. Everytime I get another mail starting with "Dear Sir," I get so frustrated...
There are two reasons we (women) seem to be less involved in the hard sciences (yes, I know I'm generalizing):
1. Women don't seem to have the "if I break it I can fix it" attitude men have (for whatever social, physiological or psychological reason you would like to insert here).
2. They seem to be less interested or think they are less competent in mathematics (please, once again insert your favorite social, physiological or psychological reason here).
Overcome these obstacles, and they will tackle and succeed at anything they want to, including "male dominated fields" such as computer science.
It's sad, but it's a fact that [most] chicks don't do geeky stuff, because it's not the popular thing. The sad part about this is that because most chicks don't do this, the chicks that DO venture into computers, are either not believed, or they suddenly get hit on by lots of geeks (they're lonely out there, y'know, and there aren't that many geek chicks to hit on, so when they DO find a geek chick, they'll hit on them for all they're worth
I doubt this'll change too much the next few years, and more's the pity. Most chicks I know (that are geeky, and that's not saying that much, it's like 2 or 3, heh) think in radically different ways from me. They think "usage", while I'm better at remembering little details that might be bringing down a box.
Chicks ARE a resource untapped of thus far, and we'd gain a lot from getting them into computing, but it's no use FORCING chicks into computing (like I know one teacher of mine tried to...). A lot has to change for that to happen, and, as mentioned earlier, that'll take time.
I wait eagerly for that time to come.
-m
99 little bugs in the code,
99 bugs in the code,
fix one bug, compile it again...
Voting Moo Anyway!