[OSGeo-Discuss] Diversity in FOSS4G

[María Arias de Reyna]

On Sat, Aug 11, 2018 at 10:36 PM, Jonathan Moules
<jonathan-lists at lightpear.com> wrote:
>> 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.
>
> ...
>
>> But going back to the topic of this thread, until we have half of the
>> developers/speakers/users being woman, we have a problem.
>
>
> I agree it's a common mistake, but I suspect I'm referring to a different
> mistake. Equality is about equal opportunity. It's not about forcing equal
> statistically representative numbers of people of various diversity types
> into all industries equally. Everyone should have the opportunity to do
> whatever they want.
>

That's the thing, we don't.

I guess you haven't seen the video. Unfortunately I don't have a good
internet connection here to look for more bibliography, but I can
point you easily to Neil, who can explain it again to you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5S7QD9dryI

> But rather than assertions, lets look at what science says on the matter.
> Which set of countries has more gender equality in STEM (Science,
> Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) - GIS falls under the T and some of
> the S:
> Finland, Norway (Countries that address most of the issues in your linked
> US-focused Forbes article)
> or
> Tunisia, United Arab Emirates?
>
> Chances are you picked wrong. It turns out that in countries with poor
> human/women's rights records (UAE, Tunisia) there are more females in STEM,
> and in countries where there is more gender equality (i.e. the
> Scandinavians), the women choose not to go into STEM.
>
> For discussion see:
> https://researchtheheadlines.org/2018/04/20/the-stem-gender-equality-paradox-from-fallacies-to-facts/
> - and the actual paper:
> http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797617741719
>
> It's great that you chose GIS, but given the choice, the research indicates
> that most women chose something other than STEM if they live in a
> progressive country, most likely psychology, education, and healthcare, all
> of which are generally dominated by women. Given this, to me at least,
> trying to force a perfect 50/50 gender balance would thus seem to be doing a
> dis-service to people of both genders; it's not equality of opportunity even
> if it does achieve perfect diversity.


Let me tell you something: having legal rights doesn't mean you have
equal opportunities. Those studies are falling into the wrong
conclusions probably because bias of the researchers. Do you really
thing a woman can choose freely to study STEM in so called advanced
countries? Because I live in one of the most feminist/advanced
countries in the world regarding gender and... no, we don't have equal
opportunity. We are very far from that. Society push us outside tech.
Please, watch the video of Neil, he explains it perfectly.

In fact, the best stories are the ones told by trans, because they
have experienced both sides of what society forces you to be. And how
they are treated is completely different. And all of them agree: women
and men are treated completely different and while being a man can be
difficult, being a woman is far more difficult. For example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrYx7HaUlMY I think there are better
videos, but this is the one I have in hand.

This is not a matter of forcing anything, it is a matter of really
having an equal field. Which, unfortunately, we don't have right now.
And same happens with PoC. And it is worst if you are WoC. We have a
lot to conquer here before we can really say we have equal
opportunities.