Fri, 16 Feb 2007

SkyCon: Gender, Free Software and the EU

Val Henson presented a theoretical world-view where:

Hackers != social
women == social
Therefore, women != hackers

So are women discriminated against in the largely high-tech world of Open Source Software? Perhaps it doesn't matter since a huge proportion of women think the are discriminated against. But are the guys just as social? mboxstats run over an arbitrary period showed that Andrew Morton sent almost 3,000 mails to the lk mailing list in 9 months. Is that not communication?
"Two paths to fame: coding and flaming." - everyone hates it but women hate it more. Perhaps women are different? Val suggested that women are socialised to be peacemakers - but follows that in her discussion with other kernel developers, predominantly male, they say they dislike the unproductive flaming just as much. Perhaps men and women are not so different.
Free software requires free time, and women generally have less free time (17.5 hours versus 20 hours, per week.)

posted at: 14:14 | path: /technical | permanent link to this entry