On 07/08/2008, Michael Holloway <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I think, (and without starting WW3 here) that the statistics are linked > to a whole lot more. Women have always been welcome to join in these > communities. (or at least for a long time ?? don't know how it was in > the 80s). But:
The statistics are certainly only a very small part of the story and the reasons for such an imbalance are many and varied. I agree that women are normally welcomed into communities, but so far this hasn't worked. [snip lots of interesting points] I'm not too interested in going into the reasons for it, there are lots, and many people better qualified than me have done a better job of enumerating them. But certainly, the differences in the socialisation of boys/girls in our society has a lot to do with it. > I don't know what the younger generations are like (ratio wise), but i > suspect the ratio between is decreasing along with the old "nerd/geek" > image that we "the nerds & geeks" had. Actually, in terms of studying computer science at university the gap has gotten wider in the last 10-15 years (I can't remember the study but I suspect it concentrated on the US). I'm really not sure how much things are improving within FOSS and I'm too young to know what the situation was like for women 20 or so years ago. Although I do remember being dissuaded from being interested in computing at every turn (by both adults and peers) when I was growing up. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
