[OSGeo-Discuss] new: OSGeo women mailing list

[Agustin Diez Castillo]

There are tons of articles about women and science since more than 20 years ago I will recomend a look to Longino (1987) [1].
[1] http://www.jstor.org/pss/3810122

On Nov 16, 2009, at 9:58 PM, Landon Blake wrote:

> 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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