tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1685560256628587439.post4409341121271203815..comments2023-07-10T07:12:16.641-04:00Comments on The Female Perspective of Computer Science: Women in Open SourceGail Carmichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14173555781667297996noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1685560256628587439.post-72094881837522327562007-06-01T10:36:00.000-04:002007-06-01T10:36:00.000-04:00Hey Chris!Thanks for the interesting comment. I w...Hey Chris!<BR/><BR/>Thanks for the interesting comment. I will certainly check out your links.<BR/><BR/>I believe that thinking about some of these stereotypes is just as important as the (very good and completely valid) points you bring up. I think that many are afraid to consider these issues because they may indeed come off as sexist (we live in a politically correct world after all). That's why I even bothered writing a blog entry about it; it seems to be one of the only areas that hasn't been touched on much.<BR/><BR/>But until we recognize that men and women are indeed different in these ways (based on multitudes of studies and my own personal experiences), it will be hard to attract women to open source or high tech in general, even if we address the issues you pointed out.<BR/><BR/>I should also point out that I never said "women are better at social things" - I only said that women tend to appreciate social contact. Related to this is the idea that many women often want to contribute to society, which is why many are in the service industry. Perhaps this second idea can also be used to attract more females to open source, as it should be easy to demonstrate how such software benefits many groups.<BR/><BR/>Again, hopefully you will take the second statement (which is not a direct quote from my text), "women don't like activities that require lots of attention outside work", with a grain of salt. All I was saying in that paragraph was that, based on observation, female programmers seem much less likely to go home from school or work and continue programming (other than school assignments). Have you noticed otherwise?<BR/><BR/>Thanks again,<BR/>GailGail Carmichaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14173555781667297996noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1685560256628587439.post-61065328021458882542007-05-31T23:20:00.000-04:002007-05-31T23:20:00.000-04:00Hi Gail!I've thought about this problem a lot -- I...Hi Gail!<BR/><BR/>I've thought about this problem a lot -- I ran a project for GNOME last year to have a Summer of Code for women going on alongside our regular one, since for GNOME we had zero female applicants out of 181 for Summer of Code in general. :/<BR/><BR/>And, I don't think the stereotyped conclusions you come to ("women are better at social things", "women don't like activities that require lots of attention outside work") are the answer -- if anything, they might even be sexist themselves. I thought you might enjoy reading the two PDFs in the <A HREF="http://flosspols.org/" REL="nofollow">FLOSSPOLS report</A>, which came to some stunning conclusions about why there are so few women in free software, such as:<BR/><BR/>* women receive their first computer several years later than men, on average, so they're naturally less experienced at the same age.<BR/><BR/>* women self-rate themselves as being worse at programming than the men in their college classes, even though testing shows their ability to be the same!<BR/><BR/>Just reading these two sections of the report gave me a huge insight into why we're so bad at encouraging women to become programmers, and why the "are you the best of the best?" attitude often associated with Summer of Code turns women away rather than attracting them. There's also the problem of joining an open-source community being the social equivalent of walking into a room with 500 men where you're the single woman -- there are so few female role models out there that we need some kind of bootstrapping process to get things moving. That's what the motivation for the <A HREF="http://gnome.org/projects/wsop" REL="nofollow">GNOME WSOP project</A> was, to generate strong role models.<BR/><BR/>Anyway, hope you find all that interesting; we certainly need all the help we can get to involve women in the community. :)<BR/><BR/>- Chris.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15446225719477340013noreply@blogger.com