Re: [free-software-melb] Encouraging women
Bianca Gibson Ben Finney +1 On Jan 13, 2012 1:23 PM, < free-software-melb-request@lists.softwarefreedom.com.au> wrote:
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Encouraging women (Bianca Gibson) 2. Re: Encouraging women (Bianca Gibson) 3. Re: Encouraging women (Matt Giuca) 4. encouraging women (Bianca Gibson) 5. Re: encouraging women (Andrew Pam) 6. Re: encouraging women (Bianca Gibson) 7. Re: Encouraging women (Ben Finney) 8. Re: Encouraging women (Ben Finney)
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Message: 1 Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:44:25 +1100 From: Bianca Gibson <bianca.rachel.gibson@gmail.com> To: Melbourne Free Software Interest Group <free-software-melb@lists.softwarefreedom.com.au> Subject: Re: [free-software-melb] Encouraging women Message-ID: <CAOZrvMPkk1fGzjjRV-4=DOd7wG0Q62KnB1XLOR=0UaKZ0qBH_g@mail.gmail.com
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" I see complimenting any person on their achievement, without referencing their sex or discriminating on that basis, to be one improvement of many." I agree there. To me, were a lot of groups tend to fall short is including women or other minorities in the group without making us feel like the odd one out. Very similar stuff can be said for age, someone I know that is male and went to his first LUG at 15 felt like the odd one out, the next youngest person was 21 and he found it daunting.
If I'm complemented like the example I don't take it in a bad way, to me it's just a complement.
It's not rare for someone to comment around the same time that they meet you about there not being many women in FOSS. If you are a young woman it takes a pretty tough skin to show up and keep coming, partially due to pressures completely external from the group.
I'm not particularly good at judging how daunted people feel because I'm so used to gaming culture. I've found FOSS groups more inclusive mainly because I've received very little unwanted attention, whereas in gaming culture I saw and sometimes was the target of much worse. That could just be because in this case I'm significantly younger than most people. I'll try to find out more at Adacamp.
I think people need to bear in mind that when a woman takes an interest in computing, at least in my experience, you have to put up with a lot of stigma around your interest and being discluded from a young age. Right from primary school I was discluded largely for my interest in computing and games over things like sparkly gel pens. High School was better because I attended a partially selective school, but a girl I knew that was years younger than me ended up not going on the school camp she wanted to (games camp) because of the stigma around going to the nerd camp. For her it would have been hard to go completely against her existing social group and she would have been teased by them.
The point of that is, that women coming to things like this have probably had to take a lot in their pursuit of that interest. Probably been actively discouraged along the way, and may well still be getting actively discouraged. The complementing stuff isn't about coddling women, it's about being nice to people in general and taking specific care to be nice to people that may feel excluded, or have forces pushing them away from the group in order to make them more likely to stay.
Bianca
On 13 January 2012 15:20, Patrick Elliott-Brennan <mail@elliott-brennan.id.au> wrote:
Bianca Gibson Ben Finney +1
Heh... Top post and quoting what appeared like the entire digest email. Bad boy, Patrick! ;-) Not even sure which bits the +1 is to be applied to. I am not totally sold on the making a compliment when you don't feel like it as it could sound a little facetious. I could be totally off base on the matter. Is it better to include women (and those who are at the ends of the age bell curve) in discussions by finding out what they have been doing or what they want to do next? You may not be interested in writing something in Ruby, Python, Java or Blah nor the project itself directly but you might still learn something. As an example, how did you solve this and that problem? If I am teaching someone about Arduino which is written in a C derivative (to the pedants reading this: it's near enough for this discussion), I will take the person through a simple hello world example and the procedure for 'uploading' the program. Then suggest making a change. Suggest a code alteration to do on their own. This could be applied in just about any other platform, language or framework. I have never moved the keyboard from the student, to my knowledge. Neither subtle nor overt harassment should not be tolerated. Name calling or stating that someone's argument doesn't matter is wrong, perhaps there is something in the person argument or some side of it that you haven't considered. In the recent past, I have found some people on this list to be obnoxious at worse or blunt at best. While I am on the harassment issue, I would like to point out that those that have been bullied relentlessly (as in just about every hour of every school day for years) during their school life can be carrying anything which varies from self-doubt to full on trauma for life. It doesn't matter what the sticking point was, whether it's because you are/were overweight in school, or a speech impediment, too short, wears "uncool" styled glasses or full year older than the rest of your class mates, or a range other reasons to nit pick. I am not saying that we should not argue passionately out of fear of hurting someone's feelings but careful of rejecting a point without justification as it can come across as though you are rejecting the person whose point doesn't matter. If I have struck a raw nerve with someone, I apologise but felt that I had to put it on the table as some people out there still don't get it. I'm thinking back to the aftermath of the last keynote from a FOSS conference last year, but it could have been any conference or presentation. I'm not digging up specific examples as it's beside the point but to paraphrase from memory: "I did not feel that the photos were that bad". If I am judged negatively for what I have said above, so be it as the more rights of marginalised or vulnerable members of any community need to be supported, promoted and defended as and when necessary. (Hopefully most of this makes a moderate of sense at this hour) Regards George
On 14/01/12 02:11, George Patterson wrote:
Neither subtle nor overt harassment should not be tolerated. Name calling or stating that someone's argument doesn't matter is wrong, perhaps there is something in the person argument or some side of it that you haven't considered. In the recent past, I have found some people on this list to be obnoxious at worse or blunt at best.
George and I caught up at linux.conf.au and I gather that the obnoxious/blunt discussions he mentioned were actually on another group's mailing list. It goes without saying Free Software Melbourne expects all members to be excellent to each other. If you ever feel uncomfortable about participating in this group, please get in touch with myself <ben at stumbles.id.au> or Alex Fraser <alex at phatcore.com>. We take harassment seriously and promise to handle any concerns promptly and discretely. Regards, Ben
On Thu, 26 Jan 2012, Ben Sturmfels <ben@stumbles.id.au> wrote:
On 14/01/12 02:11, George Patterson wrote:
Neither subtle nor overt harassment should not be tolerated. Name calling or stating that someone's argument doesn't matter is wrong, perhaps there is something in the person argument or some side of it that you haven't considered. In the recent past, I have found some people on this list to be obnoxious at worse or blunt at best.
George and I caught up at linux.conf.au and I gather that the obnoxious/blunt discussions he mentioned were actually on another group's mailing list.
It goes without saying Free Software Melbourne expects all members to be excellent to each other. If you ever feel uncomfortable about participating in this group, please get in touch with myself <ben at stumbles.id.au> or Alex Fraser <alex at phatcore.com>. We take harassment seriously and promise to handle any concerns promptly and discretely.
On most mailing lists related to free software there is a great culture of flaming. It seems to me that this is largely by design, it's widely regarded that "free speech" means saying whatever you want on a mailing list and therefore the enforcement of social standards is via flaming. Those ideas restrict freedom of speech to those who are comfortable with flaming. It seems that a policy of active intervention in discussions before they get too far out of hand is needed. Probably a code of conduct too, because almost everyone who joins this list will be used to all the other free software lists. The anti-harassment policies that are being adopted by almost all conferences nowadays are a good thing and they have been proven to work, maybe they can be used as inspiration for a mailing list policy. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
participants (4)
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Ben Sturmfels -
George Patterson -
Patrick Elliott-Brennan -
Russell Coker