Women on Stormy Peters

Meeting someone who made history as part of desegregation

Sun, 13 Jan 2019 21:07:11 -0700

Do you remember those 4 brave, little, black kindergarten girls who were the first to attend a desegregated school? This is one of those girls, Leona Tate.

She went to kindergarten accompanied by US Marshalls. She said the first year and a half wasn’t bad. Her family never let her feel like they were afraid, the US Marshalls were nice and they were the only 3 kids in the school. Everyone else pulled their kids out because of fear they’d get hurt. She said the next school was tough. Kids broke a school bus seat on purpose and blamed her; they spit in her hair (she said that was the worst) and the white mothers harassed her. One day her mom told her to come out of school and walk past her like she didn’t know her. She did and when one of the white mothers harassed her, Leona’s mother chased the harassing mother down the street! She never had a problem with the mothers after that. I’m so honored to have met her and had a chance to chat with her. I’m also so impressed with her parents’ bravery and appreciate their willingness to put their family forward in making our country a better place for everyone.

The secret to my success in a field of men? All my friends. My guy friends.

Wed, 04 May 2011 21:09:34 -0700

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few weeks talking about why we have so few women in open source and web development and how to encourage more women to join. (I even got to spend an awesome afternoon with a bunch of girls. I was supposed to be mentoring them but they were already Python game developers and small business owners - at the ages of 10 and 15!)

How does Malaysia encourage so many women in software?

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:28:37 -0700

In 2003 I gave a talk in Malaysia. What I noticed immediately is that my audience was well over half women. This was really noticeable because they were all wearing brightly colored hijabs. Usually I scan the room and count how many women I can find - usually on my fingers even in a room of hundreds. Yet here were hundreds of women attending a talk about the economics of open source software!

More Women in GNOME Now!

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:52:44 -0700

The GNOME community is extremely diverse when it comes to nationality. But we don’t have many women working on GNOME.

We want to make sure that women interested in working on GNOME know they are welcome, so we have announced the

GNOME Outreach Program for Women!

The goal is to encourage women to participate in GNOME and to provide internship opportunities in the summer.

We noticed a problem back in 2006. We had 181 submissions for Google’s Summer of Code - and not one was from a woman. So Hanna Wallach and Chris Ball launched the Women’s Summer Outreach Program. We received a 100 applications from women that summer and were able to accept 6 - six women were paid to work on GNOME and mentored by GNOME developers. (Sponsored primarily with a grant from Google.) Recently Marina Zhurakhinskaya followed up with those women and decided we should do it again and expand on the program.

Who do you represent?

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:33:22 -0700

Chris pointed me at this cartoon as a comment to my It’s not about not offending post and I keep finding myself looking at it.

I almost always feel like I’m representing a group - if not more than one group. When we lived in Alaska, I represented Caucasians. When we lived in Spain, I represented all Americans. When I go to software conferences, I represent all women. When I go to software conferences in Europe, I represent women and Americans. Talk about pressure to do a good job! It’s probably not true that I’m always representing all those groups, but I really feel the responsibility to do a good job for everyone I represent, not just myself.

It's not about not offending

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 13:11:38 -0700

When talking about women in free software or political correctness in general, we seem to focus on saying things that “don’t offend” the minority group. But that’s not what it’s about. It’s about saying things that encourage people to join your group, that send the right message and represent our values. While not saying things that send them away. The focus should be on making the message welcoming, not on making the message “not offending.”

The GNOME Foundation Is All About People

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:13:45 -0700

One of the most common questions I get asked, right after “What do you do?”, is “What does the GNOME Foundation do?” I wrote an article explaining what the GNOME Foundation does in the current issue of OSBR, Women in Open Source, guest edited by Rikki Kite. (And there are some really good articles by some amazing women like Cathy Malmrose, Angela Byron, Cat Allman, Selena Deckelman, Amanda McPherson, Emma Jane Hogbin, Audrey Eschright and Melanie Groves VonFange.)

Imagine twice as many developers

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 06:31:14 -0700

I didn’t see Danese Cooper’s talk “Why Whinging Doesn’t Work” but the title has really been bothering me. I almost titled this post “stop telling me to stop whining!”

I should start by saying I have never complained about my career in technology. (And I’m sure Danese wasn’t thinking about me personally when she wrote her title!) To the contrary, I feel like I’ve lived a charmed life in technology. Not only have I had very few negative experiences but they’ve been outweighed ten times by all the positive ones. And as I tried to point out in my lightening talk, in every negative gender related experience I’ve had, it’s always been guys who’ve jumped in to straighten things out.

Learning not to cry in today's work place

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 06:04:19 -0700

One of the things I’m passionate about is encouraging women in technology. With that in mind, I’m going to talk about something that’s never discussed in mixed company: crying at work. Or rather, trying desperately not to cry at work. I’ll tell you how I try not to cry at work and I’ll tell you how you can help someone who’s trying not to cry: create space. Tell a joke, change the subject for a minute.