On Mon, 2004-07-26 at 11:36, Amaya Rodrigo Sastre wrote: > 1. Why is the gender ratio in Free/Open Source Software even more > imbalanced than it is in the rest of computing?
I don't believe it is any _more_ out of skew, in fact I have found more women get involved in the open source scene in some ways, because they specifically don't have to deal with the social norms at 'home' that may inhibit otherwise them. The researchers should look into Malaysia where they have a huge proportion of women in IT, across the board. This apparently didn't used to be the case, they used to be similar to Australia in that they only had a very small percentage of women. Now they are offering incentives for men to get into IT, because there are sooooo many women. I was told about 70% women, and that includes the really high positions, no glass ceilings :D > 2. In what other ways are the causes of this imbalance affecting F/OSS? I think it mean people are drawn to FOSS that otherwise might not get involved in IT as they can contribute without as much crap put on them. I think that most people of the younger generations in FOSS are quite open minded, and quite accepting. You have to be to have a successful global project with people from many cultures, religions, both sexes and many ages. I think this therefore is a more supportive environment that the typical western corporate environment. I work in the corporate IT world, and it is completely different to the FOSS world. It is caught up in the social norms (women are technical! surely!), controlled by men of two generations ago who believe all women should be at home with the children, and young women are being brought up to believe they have choice and possibilities. These young women, including myself, inevitably butt heads with the older generations, and to be honest it has already driven away a secret generation of women hackers, who were extremely popular in the 60's and 70's (because they did so well on the entry tests) but didn't often last long due to the conditions they had to work under, and the complete lack of recognition they usually got. Here is a link to a paper by one of our (few) women politicians. Very smart woman: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=1178 Anyway, cheers, Pia -- Pia Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Linux Australia
