Re: [gnome-women] What's the plan?

["Murray Cumming" <murrayc murrayc com>]

> I'm really glad to see we're doing something focussed to encourage
> female participation in Gnome. :)
>
> On 29/05/2006, at 2:24 AM, Murray Cumming wrote:
>>>
>>> 1. Track the numbers:
>>>   We need to know the gender percentages in the GNOME Foundation
>>> every
>>> year, so we can roughly measure our progress.
>>
>> It looks like this will happen:
>> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/found
>
> Potentially awkward. :(
>
> We need to make gender recording optional:

Yes, that's the plan. I think it solves most potential controversy.

>  some people aren't happy
> with being told to log their gender, and some don't fit in the binary
> male/female classification.
>
> A checkbox item like:
> _________________
>
> We are keen to make GNOME an environment where gender doesn't define
> your opportunities. In doing this, it really helps if we know who's
> participating: we can evaluate our program and improve it. You don't
> have to give us this information, but we'd really appreciate it if
> you would. Thankyou. :)
>
> Gender stats
>
> I identify myself as
>
> [ ]	male
> [ ]	female
> [ ]	currently neither
> [ ]	I do not wish to give this information
>
> We know gender is a spectrum, including many very complex situations
> which we don't really understand well enough to describe here. If you
> can help us make GNOME a friendlier place for people like you, please
> email gender_all gnome org

I suggest that we keep this simple for now, but feel free to reply to the
thread on foundation-list. I won't be the one actually implementing this.

> __________________
>>
>>> We could do a one-off
>>> survey now.
>
> As long as you're careful and considerate about the gender spectrum
> and privacy,

I don't think this requires changes to the privacy policy as long as it's
optional.

> as above (which is only an approximation: somebody can
> probably do it much better than I can), it could be useful.
>>>
>>> 2. Special treatment:
>>>   - Persuade existing GNOME developers to give extra time and
>>> patience
>>> to potential female contributors? I have very little time, but I'd be
>>> prepared to dedicate some time and be unusually (for me) patient for
>>> this good cause.
>
> Funnel it through Gnome-women and a mentors listing. We can refer
> people to you and help support them.
>
>>>   - Create a wiki page with lists of potential mentors (and their
>>> areas
>>> of expertise), and potential people to be mentored? This would be
>>> good
>>> for the male contributors too, of course.
>
> Good in general. We discussed this on Ubuntu-Women recently, and were
> concerned that anyone listed as a mentor is recommended personally as
> having the skills and attitude needed.
>
>>>   - How do we avoid this looking like a place for men to find women?
>>> Would a code of conduct help?
>
> YES. Plus a procedure for reporting and managing breaches of it.

At the moment, I guess that a whole beaurocratic structure to handle
problems would be hard to get going and would make this appear less
attractive. Plus people would tend to leave all "enforcement" up to the
beaurocracy instead of just saying "Hey, that's not good. It's really
against our code of conduct".

I think Ubuntu's code of conduct is successful because of the expectations
that it creates rather than the organizational structure it creates. I
would like GNOME's Code Of Conduct to be simpler.

>> I created a general mentoring page.
>
> Good start. :)
>
>> Hopefully it will fill up:
>> http://live.gnome.org/MentoredProjects
>> But the above questions remain.
>
> OK, I've added myself (mentor for female translators). This is part
> of something I'm doing through the network of women-in-computing
> groups, and hope to continue for some time, through a number of
> practical applications of our work. I'm happy to focus part of that
> at Gnome.

Excellent.

[snip more good stuff]

Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com