Re: Important - question about GNOME Women

[Stormy Peters <stormy peters gmail com>]

cc'ing GNOME Ambassadors in case others also get similar questions!

Izabel is doing an interview and wanted some thoughts on some of the interview questions. (FYI, I often do this too! Any questions I get about the GNOME 3 release I usually run by someone on the release team.)

Here are my answers. Feel free to use them or adapt them to your own beliefs.

We are seeing the number of women in technology grow but there are still way more men. Why is that?

The number of women in free software is increasing. However, we started small, <2%, so it's going to take us a while to get to 50%! We also need to make sure we help encourage girls to go into technology so that we have lots of candidates who might be interested in careers in technology and in particular free software.

How do projects focus on gender issues?

Typically projects do not focus on gender issues. However, many projects have created groups to help support women and encourage them to participate. Men and women participate in these efforts.
* GNOME Outreach Program for Women
* Women Caucus
* GNOME Women
* ...

Traditionally women have been encouraged to be teachers and nurses and given dolls and boys are the ones that get computers and encouraged to go into technology. Is that the way it should be?

Absolutely not! I see many happy with women with awesome careers in technology. I hope we can show all girls that possibility. (And I begged and begged for a computer growing up and got one. Before that I wanted an alarm clock, not a doll, so I could get up and read before school. :)

Why should men help encourage women to participate in free software?

Many reasons:
(1) not only are women missing out on a potentially awesome career in technology
(2) but free software projects are missing half of their contributors. Instead of 400 core contributors to GNOME, we could have 800!
(3) it will also help in areas with poverty and undereducation. IT has been proven that if you help women in societies that are underprivileged that they will improve the lives of their whole extended families and society.
(4) Half our users are women. If there is a difference in how they think and use the computer, we should be sure we have their input.

Others?

Stormy