[kde-community] FOSDEM Organisation

[Jens Reuterberg]

The last decades Computer Sciences have lost women across the board, from 
being a steadily rising curve it is now lower than it was in the 80's (1)
Women in STEM sciences are low but in many other areas this is slowly getting 
better because the age old excuse of "well women don't really want to" doesn't 
hold muster when the natural question "why?" is asked.

Earlier you asked about female dominated areas like child care for example - 
the same are true for them, the attempt is to find more men to enroll in 
educations for example (a drive that has worked rather well here for example). 
The reasoning isn't so the girls taking those classes could socialize or find 
dates (I am actually pretty certain not a one argued for that eventual 
benefit) - its because it enriches the area when there is 
1) more people (adding women does not mean kicking out an equal amount of 
men of course.
2) people from different backgrounds behave differently in situations. More 
minds thinking about a problem from different angles = new ideas and 
solutions.

For example there are female showers at hostels not because the owners 
think that women are better hostel guests than men or that they want to 
implement a "genderocracy" (a term I think is a rather apt description of what 
we're living under now) but because they want more guests and not having 
seperate showers tend to drive people away. 

Finally the Code of Conduct is not just about women, its about LGBT people, 
people of color etc. AND white straight men too of course.

(1) From Wp http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-computer-programming-was-womens-work/2011/08/24/gIQAdixGgJ_story.html?hpid=z3



On Monday 08 December 2014 22.33.50 Laszlo Papp wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 10:02 PM, Alex Merry <alex.merry at kde.org> 
wrote:
> > As Valorie said, if you want more female talk submissions,
> 
> I am afraid that I am personally not yet sure whether I wish that. I
> am not going to those places and events to see beautiful ladies, get
> dates later and the like. What I personally would like is the most
> qualified submissions. Whether that happens to be from a male, female,
> etc, that does not matter so much to me. When I visit these
> conferences I would like to have the best technical experience and
> then the socialization as the secondary trait. Even then, I do not
> mind what gender I am socializing with.
> 
> I hope that this effort for fixing the "gender ratio" will not
> compromise the quality of the conferences. I personally believe more
> in meritocracy than "genderocracy". Therefore, I would rather put the
> effort into attracting world-wide and recognized industry and
> community experts than ladies just for the sake of being females.
> 
> I agree about the CoC, however, gender independently. This is not such
> a big concern for me, but I appreciate that if it is for some other
> people. I have personally never seen the QtCS, Qt dev days, etc, code
> of conducts either and they were amazing events. Qt dev days in Munich
> (2011?) had many ladies around, too. Either way, If the organizers can
> do something to make the attendants feel comfortable without too much
> extra work, I think they ought to try.
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