[OSGeo-Discuss] new: OSGeo women mailing list

[Landon Blake]

Tyler,

I understand your wife's perspective completely. It seems reasonable to
conclude that there are fewer women involved in OSGeo projects because
there are fewer women involved in open source computing to begin with.

A possible response to your wife's argument is that our society tends to
condition women for certain types of roles, and that we steer them away
from careers in math or science. I don't know if this is true, but I can
tell you I see the same lack of women in surveying and engineering as I
do in software development. I don't have any daughters, but I have a
couple nieces. It seems my younger niece, who is currently a freshman in
high school, doesn't get much encouragement to think about math and
science careers, although I think she has the brains for it. Her older
brother, who is a senior in high school, is being encouraged to pursue a
degree in mechanical engineering or a technical job in the United States
Air Force.

This in just one small example of what may be a larger trend in the way
we view our children, at least in the United States.

If our society is guilty of this bias in the way we raise, train, and
teach our daughters, then some conscious effort to correct this bias is
probably not inappropriate.

I'm sure your wife and others have a response to this argument as well.
If nothing else, I think this is a good conversation to have.

Hopefully I did not just open Pandora's Box. :]

Landon
Office Phone Number: (209) 946-0268
Cell Phone Number: (209) 992-0658
 
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Tyler Mitchell [mailto:tmitchell.osgeo at shaw.ca] 
Sent: Monday, November 16, 2009 12:51 PM
To: Landon Blake
Cc: OSGeo Discussions
Subject: Re: RE: RE: [OSGeo-Discuss] new: OSGeo women mailing list

> Maybe my statement was misunderstood?
> 
> I meant to say that members of the open source project discussed 
> what we
> might do to encourage the participation of more women in the 
> project. I
> think there was recognition across the board that the project 
> would have
> benefited from more diversity.
> 
> I'm wondering if efforts to get young women more involved in 
> math and
> science could be combined with encouraging them to try 
> volunteering with
> an OSGeo project?

Hi Landon,

I understand, please bear with me, I'm probably the unclear one.  Some
of the women I know very well (one in particular :) tend to find it a
wee bit condescending to be treated like a "special" group when in
reality they are fully capable of joining projects they are interested
in.

Speaking of open source software, if fewer women are involved I just
assume they aren't as interested.. just like any other group of people
that make their own choices regardless of what others think would be
optimal.

It's not a big deal to me, but I've been briefed on the subject from my
wife's angle regularly over the years so I feel compelled to pass it on
:-)

Best wishes,
Tyler


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