I must admit, I am relatively new participant to this community and as such
I am not caught up the history of this issue as it relates to this community
specifically. However, I have been involved at a board level with both
sporting clubs and governing bodies here in Brisbane for over 5 years now.
It is a sport with a far greater number of Male participants then Female
participants.
On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 9:39 PM, Sam Vilain <sam at vilain.net> wrote:
>
> There is one thing I noticed at this LCA that I haven't noticed before.
>
> The Unicorns were there, and they were there in force.
>
> And I feel that has to be a good thing.
>
> If adopting Geek Feminism guidelines is partially responsible for that,
> then I think that's great. I've read a large chunk of the site and I
> don't think any of it is unreasonable. It certainly made me think a
> lot. And what is feminism but support for changes towards gender equality?
I sincerely hope the Geek Feminism policy was not the reason. I'm all for
encouraging more female participants on the FOSS community but policies like
this one is NOT the way to do it.
If attitudes towards women is a problem in the community (and talk up until
now suggest that it might be with at least a subset) then there is a way to
deal with it which is used repeatedly by sporting organisations and
companies both in Australia and around the world. Instead of
writing policies like the Geek Feminism policy, effort should be put into
educating people on the issues and how to resolve them. In this case, I
think it would be a far better use of time if the people involved with Geek
Feminism came up with an education program to highlight the issues with
women participating in the FOSS community and how to make women feel more
welcome. It should also deal specifically with sexual harassment if it is an
issue with examples of what sexual harassment is and it should refer to the
sexual harassment policies employed by the conference which has, so it
seems, historically refereed to the law on the matter, These materials
should be distributed to everyone that registers for the conference and a
talk should be given on registration day for those who wish to attend
(subject to the content being approved by the conference organisers).
It is a proven strategy that has seen positive results across many sports
and companies in Australia. It is also an ongoing process as new people
enter the sporting communities and companies. I have never seen the need for
a policy like the Geek Feminism policy while I have been involved in sport
in Brisbane (the split between men and women in the sport is approx. 90%
10%). Education + existing laws has always proved enough.
Cheers
--
Ryan Stuart, B.Eng
Software Engineer
E: ryan at stuart.id.au
M: +61-431-299-036
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Received on Tue Feb 01 2011 - 10:41:54 GMT