Not where I expected this discussion to go (and I could really live without the romanticization of Autistic Spectrum Disorders, thanks), but that's fine. The thing that stood out to me, and that I'm surprised nobody has objected to, is the fact that the article specifically implicates the Open Source community, and not technology, computers, or IT in general.
While I'm happy to criticize a lot of things about the Open Source community -- it's boastful, prone to infighting, it copies and commoditizes instead of innovating, and it hasn't done anything really interesting for at least five years (and maybe 10) -- virulent sexism and harrassment was not a vice I would have thought to associate with it. On its face, this seems like a totally unfair charge. And yet on the other hand, other programming communities seem to have more female involvement. It really surprised me at CodeMash last year to see how many women worked with the various Microsoft technologies, as opposed to the web languages (Ruby, Python, Java, etc.) that made up most of the other tracks. There's a pretty big cultural difference on that side of the fence. Conference-wise, it also comes down to who you invite. In the Apple world, WWDC struck me as having even fewer female attendees than JavaOne (the fact that WWDC has no vendors may also be a factor). But the smaller Mac/iOS conferences I go to (360iDev, Voices that Matter, etc.) focus not only on programming, but also on design, marketing, running an independent company, etc. That change in focus brings in a lot more female attendees and speakers, who are better represented among the ranks of company owners, managers, marketers, web designers, creative directors, and so on. Open source, by its definition, is just about the code -- one would think that a conference with a broader focus (e.g., web apps), would be less one-sidedly male. --Chris -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
