[OSGeo-Discuss] Diversity in FOSS4G

[María Arias de Reyna]

On Sat, Aug 11, 2018 at 2:43 PM, Jonathan Moules
<jonathan-lists at lightpear.com> wrote:
>>  Once we have a 50% of speakers that are women (even 40%), we can start
>> saying that having a full keynoter line of women speakers is no diversity.
>
> At the risk of asking a question that I know isn't meant to be asked - why
> 50%? Or "even 40%"? Surely the % should be around the same as the percentage
> of the workforce that engage in the field? This survey indicates it's about
> 37% globally so 40% would be reasonable -
> https://www.gislounge.com/gender-gis-workforce/
> (Why the rate is 37% globally is an entirely different kettle of fish).
>

This is a common mistake. If you aim for the already declining
percentage of women, you will not get far. You have to aim for the
percentage of population. The fact that only 37% of our industry is
female is itself a problem we have to address.

The lack of role models (speakers? women in the mailing lists? women
in developer leading roles?) and specially the lack of a friendly
environment for women at work is a problem in most tech related
industries:
https://code.likeagirl.io/women-are-leaving-tech-and-management-is-responsible-a6187a4d5d81
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/02/28/why-women-leave-the-tech-industry-at-a-45-higher-rate-than-men/

Not my best talk (blame jet lag), but this can give you more
perspective: https://vimeo.com/241597584

And this also applies to racial diversity. If the global foss4g is
mostly white... we have a problem.

But going back to the topic of this thread, until we have half of the
developers/speakers/users being woman, we have a problem. And the
longer we ignore it, the worse it gets.