[Indianlc] Bringing Women into LC was (Re: Intro to LCI list)

[Frederick Noronha]

Thanks for your comments, Archana.

I really don't have the answers, but there obviously is something going wrong... if one goes by the limited number of women's participation. As Sulamita would ask, if Free/Libre and Open Source Software is so great, why are there so few women in it?

Here's something written early in 2005:

http://www.tacticaltech.org/node/250

Free/Libre and One-Sex Software?
18/02/2005 - 21:18

The other day, I shared this note with my user group. It's an HOWTO on encouraging women in GNU/Linux. See http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/index.html Don't expect a response; I didn't. None came.

Dunno if women need the "encouragement". But what they could do with is a level playing field, and lower entry-barriers. When we were working on an earlier report on FLOSS (see http://www.maailma.kaapeli.fi/asia.html/ ) it became rather clear that FLOSS's geeky, male-only orientation isn't something quite so helpful in making it more relevant to more people.

Take some figures: Putting out a search on Google.com for WOMEN and LINUX threw up 2.6 million links. Both subjects are, for the right or wrong reasons, popular search terms on the Net. But combine the two, and see what happens. "WOMEN and LINUX" (with the term enclosed in careful quotes, to ensure that both topics go together) throws up barely 356 responses. See http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&q=%22women+and+Linux%22&mhttp://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&q=%22women+and+Linux%22&m....yahoo.invalid

At Asia Source, the 'other' half of humanity was fairly well represented. That perhaps had more to do with the fact that women are quite active in NGOs anyway, and, further, the organisers kept stressing on a gender-balance. At the participation level, that is.

But, otherwise, the role of women in the world of FLOSS is highly limited. Or, isn't it? What did a sprinkling of participants at Asia Source have to think of this subject?

"It's more egalitarian now. There are women using it too," says the quiet but articulate Susan Pancho-Festin of the Philippines, who's a faculty member of the University of Philippines's department of computer science since 1994.

She should know. A user of Slackware floppy-disks since 1995, Dr Pancho-Festin recalls days when "it was hard to find another woman" using FLOSS. At that time, one just had to "adjust to the composition" of user groups.

Today, she feels it is still "predominantly male" though women make up for a majority of university students. What's the reason for the lack of woman participants? "Probably user-groups were formed out of a group of friends, and in a sense it's more of a cliquish thing. They knew each other from high school or college perhaps. There is still fear among woman students to join this type of a club," she notes.

Mahin Mirza, who works with the Bhopal (MP, India) based NGO anket Development Group, is more blunt. She says: "Ideologically, FLOSS is meant to be all-inclusive. But when it comes to specifics, it is not so, not just for women, but also for smaller communities and peripheral groups. I think it has a long, long way to go."

"You don't have equality (in the world of FLOSS) in terms of numbers and participation. New learners, who are women, quit after a point. We didn't have (at Asia Source) enough women facilitators ... and it's not that they're not capable."

Jayalakshmi "Jaya" Chittoor, who works for the NGO ict4d and edits its magazine -- see http://www.i4donline.net/ -- on the suburbs of Delhi, argues: "I think the technology has been developed by people who perhaps don't have a good understanding of the time and space women need to adopt to new technology. There are design issues, there are structural issues."

Jaya points out that women always have to cope with dual or multiple roles. So, the time they have to dedicate to learn "the hard way" can itself prove to be a barrier.

apcwomen.org's Jaclyn "Jac" Kee Siew Min of Malaysia puts it bluntly: "There is definitely a lack of attention... almost a gender blindness, as opposed to deliberate exclusions. This is something that is resonated from the masculine cultures surrounding technology anywhere. As a movement trying to transform social relations into being more free and open, gender blindness is not an option."

Something to thing about...
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