Hi Jacinta, we may be straying off-topic here.
Before I answer your question, let me add that I think we should train potential female (and male) contributors to not give up so easily after running into a potential difficulty. In http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/ , Jennifer is suffering a lot of verbal abuse from Erisa at first (who is a girl no less), but doesn't give up and eventually is able to become a competent FOSS developer. Larry Lessig also talked about why he keeps on blogging here despite being really offended from bad comments here: http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/How_to_start_contributing_to_or_using_Open_Source_Software#Some_Mental_Preparation It's inevitable to face hardship and abuse, because even I, as a guy, faced them, and still do, and have to know how to overcome them. On the other hand, a female Dutch open-source developer (in her 50s or so - mother to several 20-years old, etc.) told me that she would give up much more easily on some of my non-sexist related problems I ran into and never try to contribute to that community again. I think trying to restructure a so-called-hostile community is like making the mountain come to Muhammad. On the other hand, a single motivated person with some amount of creative thinking, and who is not willing to give up can make a world of a difference. Samantha Smith ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Smith ) changed the fate of the cold war (for the better), by simply writing a letter (and she was a 10-years old child). It's now even easier to do that using the Internet. now on to what you said: On Thu, 07 Feb 2013 11:54:29 +1100 Jacinta Richardson <jar...@perltraining.com.au> wrote: > On 06/02/13 14:55, Shlomi Fish wrote: > > I hope I won't get attacked for it too much (and I am an active > > contributor to advocacy@perl.org), but I think part of the problem is > > that Feminists (and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminazi -s - a term > > which no longer mean the same thing) are *never* happy from whatever > > behaviour the good-intentioned male hackers exhibit towards female > > developers who wish to start, > > I realise this is derailing the thread further, but I'm going to object > to this. Shlomi, there are *many*, *many* men in the Perl community who > manage to get along with the women in the Perl community without any > gender-related problems at all. > > For starters, they don't insist on using "guruess" or "hackeress" after > being told that "guru" and "hacker" were not originally gendered and > don't need to be so (and I'm delighted to see that you've improved in > this area). Thanks! Anyway, some people may be tempted to use these terms because they are speakers of foreign languages which have gendered nouns, adjectives, etc. and it influences their thoughts, even in English. So you shouldn't jump the gun at them and accuse them of being sexist, because then you're adding oil to the fire. > They're also the ones who wouldn't even bring up the word > feminazi if trying to make your point, when it has never meant the same > thing and is and always has been a deliberate slur against feminism. > They're also the ones who don't jump to point the finger at feminists > for what is clearly a society-wide problem. > “Society-wide problems” can be changed by courageous individuals who instead of blaming their problems on the world at large, take simple yet clever actions (like those who play role-playing games know to take), and know better than to give up. > Feminists (and there are both male and female feminists) are not at > fault for pointing out that lots of entrenched behaviour is not okay. > It just isn't. Things like using soft porn in slides should be > obviously not okay. But things like asking a woman who's turned up to > your tech group if she's there because her boyfriend is, or who her > boyfriend is, or even if she has a boyfriend, is also not okay. Why not? While you shouldn't ask a woman if she has a boyfriend right at the beginning of the conversation, it's not such a bad question to ask later on. But after reading the "HOWTO encourage women in open source", I felt a lot of guilt from actually thinking about talking with the women who attended it, and now I realise it was baseless. > If > someone is correcting you on what you view to be relatively mild > transgressions perhaps it means that mostly you're doing okay. Or, > occasionally, perhaps it means you didn't understand that your > transgression isn't that mild. > > As a feminist, I can say with pride that (although not perfect) the Perl > community at large is my favourite group of tech people to hang out with > largely because it's the least sexist. Sure, I got asked what the > partners' program was like, less than an hour after my talk at YAPC::EU > and sure, I get challenged to prove my Perl credibility by people who > don't know who I am at YAPC::NA (a few times) but mostly this is a > really good crowd. I'm glad. :-). I also think that the Mageia Linux community, however small, has been woman friendly, and there are several prominent women active there on mailing lists, web forums, IRC, etc. > > So I don't agree at all that "part of the problem is that Feminists ... > are *never* happy from whatever behaviour the good-intentioned male > hackers exhibit towards female developers who wish to start," The Perl > community has many men who behave wonderfully towards women who wish to > start in Perl, and I (and I'm sure a lot of feminists) are delighted > with that. What do I mean about behaving "wonderfully"? I mean > treating them as you should treat any other starting developer: assume > competence, determine background, point out appropriate resources and > provide help when it is requested, and only that help, versus "here let > me finish it for you". My tangent about Feminists not being happy, was not related to the Perl community, just said as a stream-of-consciousness thing. Thing is many women will misinterpret men trying to help from whatever reason, as harmful, and criticise it or attack it, just like Terry Pratchett described http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rincewind as <<< Rincewind is one of those people who gets in the way of his own happiness. If it was raining kisses he'd be the only person with an umbrella. (CIX Pratchett Conference) >>> You should seize opportunities when you run into them instead of getting into useless paranoia about the motivation of the other party. > > I don't think that Perl's decline in popularity is all that related to > why Perl has too few women in its communities. Neither do I. > Over time, my training > classes have probably averaged 25-30% women (which is on-par with > women's representation in IT in business). Skud's survey (years ago) > suggested 6% women (which is 3 times higher than women's representation > in open source for pleasure, although the survey may have been answered > by people who only worked in open source for work). I think Perl has > too few women in its communities for almost all the same reasons that > too few women are involved in open source for pleasure, and they're well > documented elsewhere. That is, this isn't a Perl problem, but a wider > problem. All we can do is promote (haha) the strengths of our community > and treat our newcomers well. > > All the best, > > Jacinta > Regards, Shlomi Fish -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Stop Using MSIE - http://www.shlomifish.org/no-ie/ Chuck Norris is the ghost author of the entire Debian GNU/Linux distribution. And he wrote it in 24 hours, while taking snack breaks. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
