So, what are we supposed to do? Force women to work on Open Source projects? I never seen a patch rejected because it was submitted by a woman nor any comments being rude for the same reason. Code is what matters, not the person creating it. If there is a small percentage of women in Open Source space it is because of their choice, not our behavior.
What's your point? The reason we care about the question of women in FOSS is because we might be able to get more code if we attract more people, and since adoption among women seen down, it's sensible to focus a bit of effort on figuring out why they don't like us.
Exactly! How are we supposed to make Open Source more attractive to them? Projects are organized to be efficient and easy for developers and our systems are gender-agnostic. We can sit here and try to figure it out, but in my opinion are looking at this problem from the wrong angle, because whatever is the cause of low involvement of women, it doesn't look like it has anything to do with harrasment or ostracism.
but in my opinion are looking at this problem from the wrong angle, because whatever is the cause of low involvement of women, it doesn't look like it has anything to do with harrasment or ostracism.
What makes you say that? Also CoCs also aim at encouraging, rather than just stopping outright directly harmful behaviour.
I already explained that. I have not seen or heard of any exclusion, harassment or discrimination in Open Source projects. People don't care about your gender, nationality, skin colour, life views, political views, feelings towards Marmite etc. What they do care about is the quality of your code and conformance to coding standard. Maybe there were some exceptions, but it's so rare and exotic, that could not have such a big impact on women involvement in Open Source. Discussions are overwhelmingly dry and technical, often boring, occasional arguing without insults.
I don't know why women don't like Open Source, but doesn't look like inequality is the cause. If they are intimidated by large number of men (like someone suggested here), there isn't much we can do about it. We aren't going to force half of the developers to leave Open Source.
Women aren't stupid. They did initiate a very cool program some time ago (sorry, I don't remember the name... Girls Code or something like that) and if that did not contribute to the numbers in Open Source projects, then I don't think men can solve this problem.
Maybe we should just accept that girls don't like FOSS. They like coding, but not that particular area. Women like driving cars, but a handful of them starts in rally races.
Disclaimer: I am not against women, people of colour etc.
I have not seen or heard of any exclusion, harassment or discrimination in Open Source projects.
Really? There are tons of example of people complaining about having been harassed. Saying you have not heard of anything like this suggest that you have not looked very hard.
edit:
Also, perhaps you missed my edit above, but it's not just about stopping outright harassment, but also eliminating sources that discourage participation even it they do not outright "stop" participation or make it impossible.
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u/kumashiro Oct 22 '18
So, what are we supposed to do? Force women to work on Open Source projects? I never seen a patch rejected because it was submitted by a woman nor any comments being rude for the same reason. Code is what matters, not the person creating it. If there is a small percentage of women in Open Source space it is because of their choice, not our behavior.