On 18/06/12 09:52, koltzenb...@w4w.net wrote:
in my view of the matter, and my thanks to Laura for filling in with a few
concrete examples, taking positive
action in this context would mean, I guess, to stop talking about any numbers
that we might have to
consider to be harmful - precisely: harmful for swift and wonderful
encouragement for *positive* action
Failing to acknowledge the issue, and document the numbers, is never a
good start for positive action.
For example. I'm involved in getting more women involved in Open
Source. Although it helps to get more women involved in IT, that's a
really slow way of doing it. Both personal experience and research
(FLOSSPOLS, the Australian Bureau of Statistics analysis of census data
etc) show that the proportion of women who are programmers as part of
their job is about 20%. Both personal experience and research
(FLOSSPOLS, numerous surveys) show that the proportion of women who
participate in open source projects as part of their hobbies is 2-4%.
Getting more women involved in IT in general has a very low trickle
through. Getting women who are already involved in IT to get involved
in Open Source is much more likely to be successful. Except, that many
of them have already tried it and been burned.
When the Geek Feminism wiki first started documenting sexist incidences
in IT http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents (with an
eye to Open Source specifically) I originally felt a bit uncomfortable.
I agreed that there should be a list somewhere, but wasn't publishing
such a list *harmful* to trying to encourage women who are already in IT
to give open source a go? Wouldn't they be turned away? Then I got
involved, and I realised that there were a lot of really wonderful men
who had no idea how prevalent the problems were. You could remind them
of events, and they'd nod, but if you didn't lay it all out, they had no
idea how systemic the issue is.
Documenting it all, means that we have somewhere we can point to, and
say that's where we've been and where we are now. Are things getting
better? It makes it possible for formulate goals.
It's important to document, so that you know what was, what is, and what
you're trying to achieve. Not documenting doesn't help minority groups
grow. It just means that when crappy things happen, people feel like it
must just be them, rather than than realising that it's part of a
systemic issue that others are working on.
What is the Gendergap's goal? Specifically. There is an acknowledged
problem: the participation in the project, by women, is lower than you'd
like. What percentage would you like? What percentage growth do you
want to achieve *this year*? Is that even the correct goal? Perhaps
you need to make Wikipedia a little less obnoxious to edit first? (You
know what I mean. Small edits are fine. Non contentious edits are
fine. Introducing new stuff, or making certain material less awful can
be incredibly obnoxious.) Perhaps you need to start keeping a log of
sexist incidents yourself, so that you can quantify that problem?
(These are suggestions)
Once you have a goal you can work out what you need to do, to achieve that.
J
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