Re: Code Of Conduct

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Tue, 2006-05-30 at 23:16 +0800, Davyd Madeley wrote:
> On Tue, May 30, 2006 at 04:47:40PM +0200, Murray Cumming wrote:
> 
> > Apparently, yes: This is one plausible explanation for our disastrous (1%)
> > female involvement and low asian involvement. That 1% is so scary that I
> > can't see how we can make it worse, so I'm for all kinds of crazy
> > experiments to fix it.
> 
> Not to dispute that affirmative action is a good thing, but
> perhaps we're on the wrong level here.
> 
> A quick browse of intake statistics for the University of Western
> Australia says that of 47 BCompSc freshers last year, only 2 were
> women. For BEng (all majors) the female intake was only 10%.

We seem to be far below 10%. And way below the 25% or so number that
I've read for general proprietary involvement.

I agree that wider society is the problem, and I think we should be the
solution, but we are not quite there yet.

> Also of interest, a (female) colleague asked where we're getting our
> 1% contribution statistic from. It sounds believable, but is it
> people with CVS accounts, or does it include translators who send
> translations to their i18n team leader. Did someone just look
> through a list of names and guess the genders? Similarly for
> "asianness" (sic). Are we just using the domain names on their
> email addresses?
> 
> Perhaps we should be looking towards going forces with other groups
> for a "women in open source drive" or even a "women in IT" drive. I
> know that Pia Waugh has really gotten behind this in Australia.

Yes, the current people on gnome-women-list gnome org seems to be
involved in Ubuntu and Debian. I'm sure they'd welcome ideas.
 
-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com