4 ms·

"maybe we should just tell the people that benefit from the sexism that the sexism is bad, surely they will stop"

sonnyblarney 8y ago
Well, your project, PouchDB has 20 'contributors' listed on Github, it would seem all but one are male. Give or take maybe one. So until your own project isn't blatantly gender biased, maybe you should refrain from waiving the 'sexism' card to broadly. Because I'll gather your probably not trying to 'oppress women' over there, rather, there are any number of other more nuanced and complex reasons for the absence of female contributors. There are many reasons boards are mostly male, and most of it is systematic. They're no more trying to 'keep women off boards' than you're trying to stop women from making contributions to open source. Approaching boards with information, and especially access to women's business networks where boards can find qualified women has actually worked in other areas (Finland) and it's a considerably more responsible approach. (Although in Finland there is mandating as well). FYI PouchDB is amazing, by the way.
- daleharvey 8y ago
  The reasons that boards (and OSS projects) systematically exclude women ... is what sexism is.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    It's important to differentiate between overt sexism (i.e. 'women can't or shouldn't be in business') to the kinds of negative externalities that result from a gendered world. We have gender (despite what a fringe group of academics might believe) and 99.9% of the world is fine that that. This creates gendered outcomes in various fields which in some cases might be, or perceived to be exclusionary. The difference is more than nuanced to the pointe wherein I think it's wrong to merely point at any gendered situation and say 'sexism!'. I'll bet $100 that OSS projects are not actually very exclusionary at all, and more actually representative of the fact that women for whatever reason, don't want to do that kind of stuff to the extent men do. At least today. Of course, one could argue than the ranks of female engineers are thin due to lack of role models, sexism in early years and that would be true, but even without this ... there would still be a mismatch. Screaming sexism at OSS teams or boards is counterproductive. Imagine if the government mandated that 25% of all OSS contributions of 'major projects' had to be made by women? I don't think that would make sense, nor would it be well received. But - I'll bet that the managers of major open source initiatives might be open to some facts and figures, right? Or open to networks that have more women? If the 'women's coding club of London' indicated they had a bunch of young ladies who wanted to learn the ropes of OSS would you help out? Probably, right? And shareholders are not some pasty group of old white men either. They'll listen and change will happen, though fairly slowly admittedly.
    - daleharvey 8y ago
      I'll bet $100 that OSS projects are not actually very exclusionary at all, and more actually representative of the fact that women for whatever reason, don't want to do that kind of stuff to the extent men do. * http://theeverygirl.com/why-women-are-leaving-stem-and-how-we-can-change-it/ http://theeverygirl.com/why-women-are-leaving-stem-and-how-w... * https://thenewstack.io/women-open-source-still-fighting-good-fight/ https://thenewstack.io/women-open-source-still-fighting-good... If you could donate that $100 to a relevant charity (maybe https://www.womenwhocode.com/ https://www.womenwhocode.com/) And read up why the "negative externalities that result from a gendered world" is called "sexism" and why its not counterproductive to able to identify sexism in order to work towards solving it, it is actually pretty critical.

Well, your project, PouchDB has 20 'contributors' listed on Github, it would seem all but one are male. Give or take maybe one. So until your own project isn't blatantly gender biased, maybe you should refrain from waiving the 'sexism' card to broadly. Because I'll gather your probably not trying to 'oppress women' over there, rather, there are any number of other more nuanced and complex reasons for the absence of female contributors. There are many reasons boards are mostly male, and most of it is systematic. They're no more trying to 'keep women off boards' than you're trying to stop women from making contributions to open source. Approaching boards with information, and especially access to women's business networks where boards can find qualified women has actually worked in other areas (Finland) and it's a considerably more responsible approach. (Although in Finland there is mandating as well). FYI PouchDB is amazing, by the way.

daleharvey 8y ago
The reasons that boards (and OSS projects) systematically exclude women ... is what sexism is.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  It's important to differentiate between overt sexism (i.e. 'women can't or shouldn't be in business') to the kinds of negative externalities that result from a gendered world. We have gender (despite what a fringe group of academics might believe) and 99.9% of the world is fine that that. This creates gendered outcomes in various fields which in some cases might be, or perceived to be exclusionary. The difference is more than nuanced to the pointe wherein I think it's wrong to merely point at any gendered situation and say 'sexism!'. I'll bet $100 that OSS projects are not actually very exclusionary at all, and more actually representative of the fact that women for whatever reason, don't want to do that kind of stuff to the extent men do. At least today. Of course, one could argue than the ranks of female engineers are thin due to lack of role models, sexism in early years and that would be true, but even without this ... there would still be a mismatch. Screaming sexism at OSS teams or boards is counterproductive. Imagine if the government mandated that 25% of all OSS contributions of 'major projects' had to be made by women? I don't think that would make sense, nor would it be well received. But - I'll bet that the managers of major open source initiatives might be open to some facts and figures, right? Or open to networks that have more women? If the 'women's coding club of London' indicated they had a bunch of young ladies who wanted to learn the ropes of OSS would you help out? Probably, right? And shareholders are not some pasty group of old white men either. They'll listen and change will happen, though fairly slowly admittedly.
  - daleharvey 8y ago
    I'll bet $100 that OSS projects are not actually very exclusionary at all, and more actually representative of the fact that women for whatever reason, don't want to do that kind of stuff to the extent men do. * http://theeverygirl.com/why-women-are-leaving-stem-and-how-we-can-change-it/ http://theeverygirl.com/why-women-are-leaving-stem-and-how-w... * https://thenewstack.io/women-open-source-still-fighting-good-fight/ https://thenewstack.io/women-open-source-still-fighting-good... If you could donate that $100 to a relevant charity (maybe https://www.womenwhocode.com/ https://www.womenwhocode.com/) And read up why the "negative externalities that result from a gendered world" is called "sexism" and why its not counterproductive to able to identify sexism in order to work towards solving it, it is actually pretty critical.