Comments on: Imagine twice as many developers

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:10:32 +0000

Hi Stormy,
The maintainer in question is Vincent Untz. The module is gnome-panel.
I believe gnome-panel has quite a few rapidly aging, completely ignored patches.

By: Stormy

Stormy — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 07:15:07 +0000

I spoke in Malaysia quite a while ago and what impressed me most was that half my audience was women. I asked everyone about it but to them it was normal. So yeah, including those women in our projects would increase our diversity and help set role models for women in other countries. (They already are role models.)

By: John

John — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:33:24 +0000

In other countries, the gender balance in university theoretical mathematics departments is different. I believe in Malaysia, it is a female dominated subject.
Perhaps the way to bring more women in is to start by looking outside our own countries. Balance things out by courting women that haven’t been socialized to avoid computer programming.

By: Janne

Janne — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:45:16 +0000

Whatever the reason, being a “geeky” area is not the whole explanation or even a major part. Theoretical mathematics is as geeky, as nerdy, as obsessively introverted as a subject can humanly become, and one that’s long been a completely male-dominated area. If anything, theoretical math has a worse reputation for antisocial dorkiness than computer science, and math as a subject has a long entrenched (false) reputation as being something women are not good at. And yet, even this subject today manages to have at least 30% (and increasing) female students, and a similar proportion of graduate students.
So whatever is wrong with our area, the subject matter itself can’t be the whole or major explanation.

By: Clemens B

Clemens B — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:26:53 +0000

Maybe the following recording of a talk of Fernanda G Weiden on FSCONS is of interest for you: Free Software with a Female Touch: http://www.fsfe.org/en/content/download/34051/210133/file/fscons-2007-fernanda-weiden-female-touch.ogg.torrent

By: Stormy

Stormy — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:55:10 +0000

So I really wasn’t picking on GNOME! (I do tend to use examples from my company, project or organization because that way I’m not picking on any one else.)
It’s not a GNOME problem. I forget the percentages but I could look them up: by high school, there are less women than men interested in math and science, in the university, it’s even a smaller percent, in graduate school and jobs, it’s even smaller and in open source, it’s even smaller.
So I agree, we need to make changes at the kid level. At home, in school and in the community.

By: andre klapper

andre klapper — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:46:37 +0000

To comment on the original issue, the problem starts much earlier. If I look around at my university in the Computer Sciences related courses, the amount of girls is always less than 10%. Now is GNOME “even worse” than the average CS values, or other software projects?
I don’t think so.
To me it’s the school system that somehow gives girls the feeling of not believing in themselves, especially in technical courses where also boys are present – at least that’s the case in my home country according to studies.
For the sake of completeness, there’s http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWomen and we had an outreach program in 2006, see http://www.gnome.org/projects/outreach/women/ . This is of course not meant as an excuse that there couldn’t be much more done to push this.

By: andre klapper

andre klapper — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:30:05 +0000

Alex, this unfortunately especially happens with larger projects. Maintainers often have several projects to maintain. We are currently working on establishing a Patchsquad for this to improve the patch review process, see http://live.gnome.org/PatchSquad for more information and how to join the mailing list.
In any case I understand that it is totally demotivating to not get any feedback. Please tell me one of the bug numbers that you have attached a patch to (should be enough for me to also find the rest of your contributions) and let me see if I can improve the situation a bit).
andre

By: Stormy

Stormy — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 08:08:18 +0000

Hi Alex,
Absolutely we need to encourage people who are trying to contribute, in addition to recruiting new people. The chances of getting new contributors by helping those that are already trying is much higher than going out looking for random people! My point wasn’t a GNOME specific point, it was technology industry in general point. We’re leaving the girls out.
Do you know who maintains the part of GNOME you submitted a patch for?
Stormy

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 08:02:38 +0000

You know stuff like this kind of irks me. Yeah it would be nice to have more women involved with Gnome. I’ve been trying to contribute but I can’t even get my patches looked at. I’ve had stuff rotting in bugzilla for six months. Others have had their stuff forgotten there for much longer. How about before you guys think of ways to try to attract new contributors you make a few minutes for people who already want to and are trying to contribute.