On Tue, 2006-05-30 at 19:09 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote: > On Tue, 2006-05-30 at 19:57 +0300, Baris Cicek wrote: > > I wanted to put my 2 cents on this women involvement issue. > > > > Actually women in proprietary software market have a good motivation > > like earning money from what they do. But in free software world, they > > hardly have this motivation, and most of time it's volunteer work. > > This is true of everyone, regardless of their gender. Absolutely. I also think that if number jumps from 1.5 to 23 for females, similar ratios can be given for tech people working for free software compared to proprietary software. > > > I doubt that female enthusiasm to IT is high in the world. Therefore > > they need some motivation to get involved. It's something to do with the > > loving what you do in Free Software world, and women mostly choose other > > things than staying by the computer for hours. If we go deep into this > > gender psychology and genetic closeness to particular activities should > > be considered. > > By consider, you maybe mean "use as an excuse". I don't think you have > the evidence to say that women are inherently incapable or unwilling to > do technical work. Not so long ago, it was acceptable to say the same > thing about people of different races. That was wrong, and this is > wrong. Being incapable of and unwilling to are different things. One is incapability and one is a choice. I'm just trying to say that "from what I have seen", women do not chose it. Like they don't chose to work at a construction or at mines. > > > From where I live (ie. Turkey) most women in the IT world are only there > > for earning money, > > I have quite a wide experience of the industry. I've worked with > hundreds of software developers in tens of companies. I know that most > people are only in it for the money. The percentage of I.T. people who > love software enough to work on Open Source is tiny. I have not noticed > any gender-based differences. However, even my wide experience is > probably not statistically significant, so treat it as anecdotal > evidence. I do respect that. Really. Also those personal observations would really change country by country. But numbers you have showed is self evident that gender difference has something to do with it. Involvement for free software is much more easier than involvement in proprietary world. However we see a lot of difference for women involvement. (20 times is high ratio) If there's not difference b/w male and female computer users, how come male can find to way to get involved and female users can't? My personal idea is that there's not obstacle. However if someone sees that there's an obstacle for female involvement, I respect that, and would like to informed about this as well. > > > and those I doubt they would ever touch computer at > > home or elsewhere from their office. Sure thing that there are some who > > loves to use computers. But that's really few, which won't exceed > > fingers of an hand. > > > > It's not easy to increase women involvement in that sense. We need to > > find motivation, and proprietary world does it by giving money. But > > nothing comes to my mind for Free Software world. I doubt it would be > > easy to change generic women behavior and eagerness. But maybe finding > > some really handsome hackers, and opening a beauty saloon with GNOME > > installed computers might help. (was a joke :). > > You need to recognise that there is a problem and avoid this kind of > nonsense. It's not necessary and it's not helpful. It should be easy for > you to understand that it can make someone feel unwelcome. I would not want a sentence that I told to undercover my other sayings. My joke was a general one, similar to boys with cars and girls. But still if any one find it offensive, I'm sorry.
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