Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Fwd: Event: Manchester Girl Geek Dinner #2 - 7:00 PM Friday, July 25, 2008

[Lucy]

On 29/07/2008, Paul Waring <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 12:46:58PM +0100, Dave Page wrote:
>  > A *feeling* of exclusion is still a serious problem for the community to
>  > tackle.
>
> I agree, it's an implicit exclusion rather than an explicit one (which
>  is a lesser evil in my opinion, though perhaps harder to see/tackle). I
>  don't think I've ever been to an event which has said "men only", even
>  if all the attendees happen to be men.

Just because the exclusion isn't deliberate most of the time, doesn't
do anything to lessen the exclusion itself. I agree that it does make
it more difficult to tackle though.

For those that doubt any exclusion exists, there is the following quote[1]:
"An EC funded study (2006) summarized in the Flosspols[2] report,
indicates that about 1.5% of FLOSS community members were female,
compared with 28% in proprietary software. "

It's quoted a lot because it's by far the best report in its field afaik.


MJ Ray wrote:
> The meal may be trying to prioritise women, but hindering men on
> biological grounds is a self-defeating way to do it.

Dave and others have answered this well. But I just want to add that I
feel that with the current situation, an event of this nature open
equally to men and women could easily be dominated by men
(inadvertently). I don't see giving women a rare opportunity to
interact as discriminatory and I'm sorry if that offends you.


[1] ubuntu-women.org
[2] 
http://www.flosspols.org/deliverables/FLOSSPOLS-D16-Gender_Integrated_Report_of_Findings.pdf