Re: Looking for women? - Something wrong with the numbers?

[David Sugar <dyfet ostel com>]

One of the best and brightest people I personally that is active in free 
software today does also happen to be a woman.  But I never thought 
about or even considered the question of gender in the context of 
software freedom.  Is there policies in GNOME that specifically promote 
gender bias?  I am not aware of any as such, though I agree if they do 
exist they should be changed.

If the question that's really being asked here is of the lack of 
participation of woman in free software, then this question could be 
broadly asked of IT and the sciences in general.  If you are suggesting 
that GNOME should try and establish specific policies to help counter or 
reverse this trend, then I have no idea what GNOME could specifically do 
to help in this regard, though any specific policy proposals that are 
consistent with the purpose GNOME was chartered for should be welcome 
for discussion.

David

Anne Østergaard wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-03-08 at 23:28 +0100, Murray Cumming wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 2005-03-08 at 23:21 +0100, Anne Østergaard wrote:
> >
> > > In my opinion the first smart Free Software community that understands
> > > that freedom should be for more than 50% of the worlds population
> > > (theoretically speaking) and that it should respect all its users and
> > > would be users plus welcome and include newcommers will be the community
> > > that everyone wants to belong to.
> >
> > Nobody here decided that freedom is only for men, so there's no need to
> > persuade us that we are wrong to have decided that. If you have any
> > practical suggestions to make involvement easier for anyone then let's
> > hear them.
>
>
> Nobody decided this. It just seems so to me according to the statistics
> and my own experience. I am referring to Free Software and freedom to
> have a say in IT matters and to be heard. 
>
> And it did not occur to the GNOME society (or anyone else) earlier to do
> anything about this fact which could have deep consequences for our
> national and global society.
>
> Anne
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