[OSGeo-Discuss] Diversity in FOSS4G

[María Arias de Reyna]

On Sat, Aug 11, 2018 at 11:34 PM, Jonathan Moules
<jonathan-lists at lightpear.com> wrote:
>> 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.
>
>
> Apologies, but that's a general dismissal of a peer-reviewed scientific
> paper, seemingly because you don't like the result. That's not how science
> works. If there is a problem with the paper (and most papers have a few
> quirks) I would suggest the correct way to refute it is to start by pointing
> out the methodological and/or statistical flaws, not dismissing it out of
> hand. If done thoroughly enough you can probably get a subsequent paper
> published via peer-review with some other experts in the field that refutes
> it which is usually good for career prospects.
> Like you I would have expected more women to choose STEM given the
> opportunity, but apparently they do the opposite and so I've updated my
> world-view accordingly to fit the facts. As the saying goes: You're welcome
> to your own opinions, but facts are facts.
>

No, this is not a dismissal based on opinions. It is based on facts.
This paper falls into the "correlation does not imply causation"
fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

The first and second waves of feminism focused on legal. And we
advanced a lot. But still, this "forces of society" has been detected
and studied since "The Second Sex" of Simone de Beauvoir. There was
this general feeling (the same bias the researches of the studies fall
into) that when you change legality, society will follow happily. But,
as we can see (and study), this is not what happens.

And we should have known it: the same happened when racism was removed
from law country after country: it was not removed from society.
Society follows more slowly, if it follows. Seriously, you should at
least watch the video of Neil.

That's why third/fourth? wave of feminism (depends on how you count
them) are focusing on behavior of society and acceptance.

> Anyway, we're heading off-topic. I was originally simply pointing out that
> Dar doesn't have gender diversity in the keynotes either (a point I
> maintain), and I question the unfounded assertion that 50% females in the
> industry/speakers/etc is something that is feasible given the research on
> female career preferences. I'll leave it at that.
> Cheers,
> Jonathan

You can aim for 37%, I will still aim for 50%. And this is not a
change that only OSGeo has to do, but we should push from different
perspectives to get something really done. As said, this is a
long-distance race, and by that I mean: I doubt my generation will
have equal opportunity ever, no matter how hard and how far we get. I
am aiming for the next generation.