On 15 January 2012 17:44, Clockwork PC <clockworkpc@gmail.com> wrote:
But 28% is nowhere near parity, and it raises the question of whether 50/50 is a realistic goal. There are huge differences in participation rates in other professions -- teaching, nursing, engineering, mathematics. Even if this difference *is* due to culturally embedded attitudes, well, we live in this culture and that's our reality. We can't change society at large.
Your argument here is a bit confused. You acknowledge that women's participation in free software is less than a tenth of the rate of women participating in IT professionally. Then you raise the 50/50 goal, which no one else has done and I have never seen women in free software put this forward as the aim. Finally you admit defeat that society sadly can't be changed. The drastically lower rate of participation in free software suggests that the free software community is worse behaving than society at large. So what we could do, at least, is figure out how to at least raise ourselves to the level of society at large! Society is changed by individuals changing. Charity begins at home, etc.
However, we can effect change in our own movement, and as Dennis K is right to point out, focusing on the number of women in our movement can itself be sexist. As Val Henson rightly says, "Do treat women as normal people." Well, normal people are not recruited to make up the numbers.
They aren't? Are we not trying to evangelise free software? It really depends on the aims of the group. If the group is just a club for people who like each other's company and incidentally also free software, then sure, don't be concerned about the skewed gender ratio, don't be concerned about newcomers at all. But if the aim is to change the world, to improve people's lives by introducing them to free software and to support that community by expanding it and introducing new members to it, then maybe it makes sense to give a damn about why half the population seems to be alienated from the cause.
Far more importantly than how many women there are in open source is how happy the women in open source are. Even if 28% women is the very highest participation rate we can get, given the society we live, our goal should be that the women in open source get to feel safe and included in our movement.
Let me tell you entirely sincerely, what makes me feel included is feeling that it's not unusual for me, a woman, to be part of a group. That is, enough other women around that I never go to a meeting > 10 people and find myself the only woman. It's hard to feel you belong when there is little visible evidence that you do. Taking the rate of women's participation as a proxy for the happiness of the ones there seems reasonable to me. So I don't think they are such different questions. Because if you are unhappy, you leave. We're all volunteers after all. Feeling like an extreme minority makes me unhappy. So I don't go back to those events. Rule of two feet type thing. I realise the fact that few women participate is part of a vicious circle and I don't think for a minute it is an easy or simple problem to solve. regards Brianna