My experience is that there are very few women working in shops that primarily use open source technology. When I've encountered them, it's been in Microsoft shops, and very large technology organisations which love proprietary technologies.
My guess is that open source is not really the issue (although it might be) - it's probably something to do with whatever drives the choices or prospects of women for technology employment towards those sorts of employers. If this is driven by women's preferences, then maybe that preference basically militates against open source participation as well. On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 15:14, Daniele Procida <dani...@vurt.org> wrote: > I was looking at <http://2012.djangocon.eu/schedule/> again with excited > anticipation, and reading through the talk summaries. > > <http://2012.djangocon.eu/schedule/involving-women-in-the-community/> - > and then I had a closer look at the names of this year's speakers. > > There are *two* women out of the 24 or so speakers listed, and only one is > doing a solo talk. > > This is absolutely not a comment about or criticism of the organisers; > apart from anything, I know that they're aware of and concerned about the > issues. They can only select proposals they've been given, or have > attendees who sign up. > > At last year's DjangoCon Europe, there were few women attending. At PyCon > UK last year, there was a similar dearth. Someone remarked to me then that > a Microsoft event there would be a much more equal distribution. > > So where are the women? > > Does open source put women off? Is it something in the open source > community, or the personalities you find in it? The nature of these > conferences? > > It's true that some open software communities, and the people in them, are > pretty unwelcoming to newcomers, or seem to delight in expressing agressive > and macho attitudes, but Python and Django are clearly not like that (quite > the opposite in fact). > > The conferences I've attended have been relaxed, warm and friendly. The > worst you could say is that they are a little bit nerdy, which as a > complaint would be like saying that medical conferences tend to be a little > bit doctory. > > The last thing I want is for a woman to read this (there won't be that > many reading in any case, I suppose) and decide not to go because she > doesn't like the thought of finding herself one person in ten; but from > what I understand she's one in ten in the workplace and in the industry > anyway. > > I assume that most people agree this is a problem and worth addressing, > but perhaps I'm wrong. > > If women are not part of the community, or not coming forward to do things > like give talks at - or even simply attend - its conferences, what if > anything should be done about it? > > Daniele > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Django users" group. > To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > django-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/django-users?hl=en. > > -- Marcin Tustin Tel: 07773 787 105 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to django-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-users?hl=en.
