[OSGeo-Discuss] Gender bias in nominations

Anne Ghisla a.ghisla at gmail.com
Thu Jul 24 08:13:03 PDT 2014


On Thu, 24 Jul 2014 16:55:16 +0200
MarĂ­a Arias de Reyna <delawen+osgeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 24, 2014 at 4:45 PM, Jeff McKenna
> <jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com
> > wrote:
> 
> > It has been reported to me directly that there are not enough female
> > nominations for Charter members.  I just want to bring this to the
> > attention of the whole community.
> >
> > Thanks all,
> >
> > -jeff
> >
> >
> Agreed.
> 
> On the other hand, no one should be nominated just because of their
> gender. In the long run, it doesn't help increasing female numbers.
> (It won't be the first time someone thinks I am where I am just
> because I am female and not because I worked hard.)
> 
> I'm sorry if I am bothering someone, but I am very picky with all this
> stuff. It is the eternal discussion about not having enough female in
> tech organizations. If we want to have more female on OsGeo, we
> should go to school now to have them in OsGeo in a few years :)
> 
> Until then, does it really matter? Are we doing things different? I
> know it looks very cool to have half and half but, is it really
> important?

I agree with Maria. This remembers me some past discussions while
creating OSGeo-Women mailing list.

At first we can say that no one is preventing women to enter OSGeo
jsut because they are women. But waiting the balance to change without
doing nothing is in my opinion not the way to go. Also forcing a female
quota like some countries do for elections is not the solution, because
it gives gender more importance than merit.

My idea is to give everyone the same possibilities, without giving
gender/language/etc predefined choices. Therefore I really like the idea
of talking about OSGeo in schools - and OSGeo education group is working
in that direction, even if not (yet?) to younger kids. Of course this
is an approach that will bring results in a long time, but I feel it is
the strongest.

Best,

Anne
-- 
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Aghisla
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