Women in Perl [was Re: Updating http://history.perl.org/PerlTimeline.html ]

On Monday 28 April 2008, Elaine Ashton wrote: 
>
> History repeats itself time and time again. You get the people you
> deserve by the silent majority remaining silent. Just like all the
> politics inside Parrot. The silent remain silent and things continue
> on just as they did in the days of P5P. For years many have
> plaintively commented as to why there are so few women in perl,
> especially when compared to other projects, and you need only look to
> yourselves.
>

I'd like to comment on the "Why there are few women in Perl" remark. It may 
be
a bit tactless to bring this in this context, like a pushy women-lib-fighter
who keeps bringing up the subject. (This is a style-over-substance remark)
But I'd like to address it anyway.

First of all I should note that I know quite a few female programmers here i
n
Israel, in real-life. Most or all of them seem intelligent and impressive,
and they most likely make good programmers. I also know some other female
Perl programmers online.

As for how much they contribute back to the community, that is probably less
than ideal. It is well-known that in most development environments what
happens is that most of the people just use it and not contribute back, whil
e
the amount of active contributers is much smaller. This is similar to the
fact that most of the code in the world has no sale value, (or otherwise
isn't sold) and only a very small percent of it is
open-source/shareware/freeware/proprietary/etc. (see
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/c...org/~elizabeth/ who
wrote many useful CPAN modules. There's imacat, who is an active CPAN tester
.
I know of at least three female Australians who are doing advocacy and
organisation. And in Israel, we have a few FOSS women developers who are
active in mailing lists, other online mediums, and in giving presentations.
There are also Allison Randal and Ann Barcomb who have done a commendable
contribution to Perl.

Do we have enough female contriubters? No. Can we make contributing to Perl
more attractive to women? Sure. But I don't think we should feel that we are
particularly bad now, in comparison to other projects in this respect. I
don't think I know of any projects who sport 50% (or more) female developers
.

In regards to http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/ - while it 
is
a fine and enlightening document, I don't think that after women have become
more dominant in many different fields of experience, they should suddenly
encounter particular problems when it comes to taking part in FOSS projects.
Obviously, most of the problems described in the "HOWTO" were prevalent
previously (and to a large extent still are), and women had to overcome them
and deal with them.

I am most certainly not a sexist person, I highly respect and admire some
historical and present women (some of which I personally know) and would lov
e
to see more female FOSS developers. However, I also received some heat from
women-lib-pedants, regarding perfectly innocent things I said, such as
using "girls" instead of "women", or expressing interest in some females tha
t
I met on IRC[1], or for saying "There's a girl on #perl", instead of "there'
s
a programmer on #perl" or whatever.

{{{{{{
[1] - for the record I also express interest in many male people I met there
.
}}}}}}

It's perfectly natural for a guy to do that even if he isn't a chauvinist, s
o
naturally I feel a bit frustrated about it. And if I feel frustrated, you ca
n
imagine how some people who are somewhat more offensive than I would feel.

Like it or not, there would always be "guy talk" and "sex talk", and some
flirting, etc. even if there are 50% (or more) women around. But it's time
for a few bold girls to face the heat (with enough knowledge and
determination), persist in this "female-alienating" society and pave the roa
d
for more of them to join.

I heard somewhere that freedom cannot be given, and it must be taken and
fought for.

Regards,

Shlomi Fish

P.S: while I was studying in http://www.technion.ac.il/ , I was told that
there were then 40% female students there (possibly more now). I recall
visiting the Computer Science building and seeing ~50% girls there (possibly
less or possibly more).

In my department - Electrical Engineering - there were very few female
students back when I studied - 10% or so, possibly because it is considered 
a
very hard and demanding specialisation. There are many girls in the
Industrial and Management Engineering department, which is notorious for
being the easiest department in the Technion.

In any case, it is possible that with this proliferation of females there (a
nd
in other schools and universities), we'll see more of them contributing to
FOSS projects. In a previous workplace of mine (a start-up developing 10 Gbp
s
Ethernet NICs), there were several female Electrical Engineers, which seemed
very impressive to me.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
Understand what Open Source is - http://xrl.us/bjn82

The bad thing about hardware is that it sometimes work and sometimes doesn't
.
The good thing about software is that it's consistent: it always does not
work, and it always does not work in exactly the same way.

On Thursday 01 May 2008 08:14:21 Shlomi Fish wrote:
>
> I heard somewhere that freedom cannot be given, and it must be taken and
> fought for.
>
I don't know the origin of the phrase, but the spirit is historically correc
t,
and probably always will be.

--
Richard Foley
Ciao - shorter than aufwiedersehen

http://www.rfi.net/

On May 1, 2008, at 10:41 AM, Dave Rolsky wrote:

> Imagine if every time you logged on to IRC someone got all excited
> and said "There's a Jew on #perl". Would that make you feel
> comfortable? Would you want to come back? Would it make you feel
> included in the group?


This analogy is beautiful.  It also points my annoyance with the
entire topic.  We never talk about "Jews in Perl" or "Jews in open
source".

"How can we make Perl more inviting to Jews?"

xoxo,
Andy

--
Andy Lester => andy@petdance.com => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance

Hi Dave!

Thanks for your email. I didn't explain myself properly. See below for my
response.

On Thursday 01 May 2008, Dave Rolsky wrote:
> On Thu, 1 May 2008, Shlomi Fish wrote: 
>
> This sort of thing is classic sexism. You're making a big deal out of
> someone's sex.

No, I didn't. See below.

>
> Imagine if every time you logged on to IRC someone got all excited and
> said "There's a Jew on #perl". Would that make you feel comfortable? Would
> you want to come back? Would it make you feel included in the group?

It won't but OTOH, what I said was on a different channel saying (and I
quote):

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{
there's a new chick in Perl [= #perl - my typo] called gette who learned
Perl from "Perl in 21 Days"
}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

Now arguably, "chick" is a bit derogatory. Anyway, I was told that I should
have said that "there's a new programmer in #perl". This is like saying "A
guy I work with", or "A girl I work with" (or "a man" or "a woman"), instead
of saying "My co-worker".

This is a perfectly natural way to say it, while saying "A Jew I know from
work" is unnatural, while saying "A Jewish guy I know from work" is. OTOH,
one of the women on the channel where I said it said I should have said "a
programmer" instead of "a chick".

I never said "There's a girl on #perl" on #perl, or asked a girl if
she's "hot", etc. I'm trying to be a gentleman. (Though it doesn't always
work.)

>
> Part of creating a welcoming environment for any minority group is to not
> make a big XXXXing deal out them being a minority! Engage them as
> individuals, not as representatives of some group you're not part of.
>

Right. Of course, I don't mind it when someone asks me questions about my li
fe
as a Jewish Israeli, and think many people like to answer my questions about
their lives in different countries and conditions. It's part of the fun of
IRC.

Regards,

Shlomi Fish

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
Parody on "The Fountainhead" - http://xrl.us/bjria

The bad thing about hardware is that it sometimes work and sometimes doesn't
.
The good thing about software is that it's consistent: it always does not
work, and it always does not work in exactly the same way.

>>> 
>
> No, I didn't. See below.
>


Shlomi, the key is that calling out someone's differences often makes
the person feel uncomfortable.  "Hey, look, a female" doesn't do
anything positive, and indeed probably makes the person feel awkward.

The key to equality is to treat the people equally.

xoa

--
Andy Lester => andy@petdance.com => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance