The Free Software community is women unfriendly?

Women in Software – Open Source, Cold Shoulder (registration required, find login/password at bugmenot). Interesting article that analyzes also why “while the gender ratio in the industry as a whole is roughly five to one, the ratio in FLOSS appears to be several hundred to one”. I have to admit that reading a “female” nickname on a technical mailing list often surprises me. I’m not proud of it and I guess this is just due to the fact that, to me, this is not a frequent fact and I’m not used to. Anyway any article that allows to think about our own limits (and possibly overcome them) is good and so I think this article can help us in moving forward.
[Via my shared institute printer (I always look at pages printed in the printer and often find something interesting, I guess it is similar to a deadtree del.icio.us page ;-) )]

2 thoughts on “The Free Software community is women unfriendly?

  1. Rosella

    Indeed, interesting article, and interesting comment as well — on female (nick)names in technical lists. Thanks.

    Just added the article to the web site and db of gender and science at irst ;-).

    RosellA

  2. paolo

    una email che avevo mandato tempo fa a chi mi aveva chiesto altre info
    (email is where knowledge goes to die, I should know it by now and post any [non private] email on the web somewhere automatically: it is very easy to do it for example on blogger…).

    —-
    MAIL

    http://www.misbehaving.net/
    misbehaving.net is a weblog about women and technology. It’s a
    celebration of women’s contributions to computing; a place to
    spotlight women’s contributions as well point out new opportunities
    and challenges for women in the computing field.

    http://www.misbehaving.net/2005/02/the_debian_wome.html

    http://women.alioth.debian.org/about/

    http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/

    http://www.misbehaving.net/2004/12/results_of_new_.html

    http://www.misbehaving.net/2004/10/decline_in_wome.html

    http://www.womensgameconference.com/

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