Women developing FLOSS - freedom for knowlege free from prejudice

[Frederick Noronha (FN)]

http://www.genderit.org/en/index.shtml?w=a&x=91693	

Women developing FLOSS - freedom for knowlege free from prejudice

Friday 10 Feb 2006, Graciela Selaimen [APC Women’s Networking Support
Programme ]
	

Related links:
LinuxChix Brasil

Sulamita Garcia is a 28-year-old consultant who specialises in Unix
systems and is completely enthusiastic about free and open source
software. She is responsible for the LinuxChix Brasil project. In this
interview for GenderIT, Sulamita tells about the recent experience of
LinuxChix Brasil, which is delivering online courses on FLOSS for women.
She speaks about prejudice, stereotypes and the need for women to
overcome initial difficulties when facing new technologies.

Sulamita Garcia is responsible for the LinuxChix Brasil project – one of
the most successful regional chapters of LinuxChix International. She is
the mantainer of a how-to in Linux, in Portuguese.
Graciela Selaimen - How is LinuxChix Brasil working to encourage more
women to work in the technological field, especially using FLOSS?

Sulamita Garcia - LinuxChix started as a space for women who worked as
techies to come together and get support. Generally when these women
joined us they felt happy and surprised that there was a group of women
discussing technology and that they were not alone. Many times, in other
spaces dominated by men, they felt oppressed by discriminatory
behaviors, jokes and lack of opportunity to express their opinions and
knowledge. This is definitely very discouraging.

In many male dominated spaces, the prevailing belief is that “if women
are not participating, it's because they don’t want to, are not
interested or are not able to intervene, since the community is open for
all”. In LinuxChix, we made the commitment to debate the reasons behind
such small participation of women in the technological field -
especially working with Linux - and we started to reflect on what could
be done to change this scenario, so that the next generations don’t need
to face so many barriers as ours. We produced documents on this issue
and also other materials more focused on technical aspects to contribute
to the debate of the FLOSS community in Brazil. This led to a chain
reaction – where more women met other women’s examples, felt supported
and were inspired to deepen their interest in technology development and
FLOSS.

Regretfully, after some time, the great majority of the FLOSS community
still wasn’t friendly to women, since it works as a meritocracy: you are
worth what you contribute. If women weren’t included, it was because
they hadn’t contributed enough – so, why should they deserve any
recognition?

Of course, there were always women contributing to the community, and
LinuxChix was created to give them more space and create a motivating
environment to increase women’s contributions. And, as the examples of
valuable contributions made by techie women were more and more frequent,
most of the women finally felt that they deserved to be part of the
FLOSS community – men were making no favor in accept us in it. As the
space for women grew – and, consequently, the contributions made by
women -, today the Brazilian FLOSS community accepts much better women’s
participation and is open to discuss women’s role in it.
Graciela Selaimen - Do you think that FLOSS is an empowerment tool for
women? Why?

Sulamita Garcia - Free and open source tools make knowledge free and
enhances the development of professional capacities, it imposes no
limits to what a technology professional can do. There are researches
that prove that 70% of the poor in the world are women, and this is a
result of thousands of years of oppression and constraints to women’s
education and professional development. Today, women are majority in the
universities, however we still don’t have the same opportunities as men
to enter the labor market.

Computers are still seen as boy’s toys – even before going to the
university many boys are ready to work with technology and develop
careers in technical fields. Women, most of the times, need to dedicate
much more time to study and professional improvement. In the FLOSS
community, what is more important is the exchange of knowledge – through
codes, documentation, debates and ideas. It’s like a library, a huge
live encyclopedia available. This is very important for women and can be
very helpful to their development.
Graciela Selaimen -How does the LinuxChix are positioned in regard to
ICT policies? Is there any involvement with other women organizations,
or even with other institutions that work towards bridging the digital
gap? Do you see any gender perspective in the ICT public policies in
Brazil?

Sulamita Garcia - Although many people affirm that our work is
political, we don’t face it this way. There are other groups, such as
the Gnurias and the PSL-Mulheres that are focused in policies and
digital inclusion. What we believe is that, without changing the minds,
fighting the prejudice that exists against women in technology, and
without overcoming the idea that women aren’t capable of working in this
area as well as men does, to include women in technology merely as users
would increase the prejudice.

Also, it’s important to stress that we contribute on issues that we
understand better – mostly, technical discussions. In one hand, our
group has an inclusive character as we support women to develop
professionally and find motivation and inspiration to overcome
difficulties in their careers and studies. Also, we support women to
fight against prejudice and stereotypes, many times expressed through
abusive behaviors by men, verbal aggression and psychological
aggression. Recently a guy entered several women’s lists and threatened
some women - and their relatives. Of course in such cases, when you feel
supported and motivated by the group, it’s easier not to feel depressed
and discouraged.
Graciela Selaimen - One of the LinuxChix, Vanessa Sabino, is dedicated
to a study on women and technology. What is it exactly about?

Sulamita Garcia - It’s about mapping out the women who made valorous
contributions in the history of informatics and Linux. Many of these
amazing contributions are invisible and this study aims at demonstrating
this invisibility and how it misleads the perceptions regarding women’s
participation in technological development. For example, Vanessa’s
research has found that it was a woman who was responsible for the
development of the concept of recursive functions, what was a great
advance in the technological field. Also, there is a Brazilian woman
among the team of people who contributed to the kernel. This has to be
shown and we will gather this information in a website.
Graciela Selaimen - When it comes to training women in FLOSS
development, what are the initiatives of LinuxChix Brasil? How the
participation of women in courses is – are there more women
participating when the training is delivered by a woman?

Sulamita Garcia - For sure. We have no statistics on this, but there are
always comments about women being more motivated to enroll a course when
they know that the trainer or facilitator is a woman. In the past, many
few women would feel encouraged to spend a weekend in a hostile
environment and take the risk to be bothered with chauvinistic comments
and jokes, coming from classmates and even the instructor. This also
happened in events. Last year, during the National LinuxChix Meeting in
São Paulo, about 15% of the participants were women. A few weeks ago, in
the Slackware Users’ Meeting, in the same venue, I was the only women
speaker and there were 15 women among 300 participants.

We foster the organization of professional training whenever there is
space for that. In this year’s LinuxChix National Meeting there was a
laboratory avaiable, where several training courses were held – in half
of them, women were the instructors. We have several other courses being
organized, both in face to face meetings and in online environment.
Graciela Selaimen - In your opinion, what are the things and situations
that still constrain a more intense presence of women in technical
careers – and how can they be overcome?

Sulamita Garcia - The first challenge is to overcome the generalized
idea imposed by our male dominated cultures that women are not skilled
to computing and technology and that the best they can do is to develop
cute interfaces or organize documents. Women are very often not
considered when it comes to the development of activities that deserve
more recognition and experience in computing. This is a kind of problem
that women themselves have to be responsible to overcome. I always say
that women have to change behaviors if they want to gain respect and
open the doors to more opportunities – such as stop competing among
themselves and be more united and work in partnership. Without gathering
forces, things are much more difficult for us.
Graciela Selaimen - What kind of advice would you give to women who feel
like learning how to develop FOSS ?

Sulamita Garcia - I’d suggest that they take the first step. They can
subscribe to a women’s list, to LinuxChix or to other women’s community,
and participate, share their knowledge and experiences. I’m sure once
this step is taken, they’ll find mates ready to help overcome any
difficulty. This is a natural and gradate movement. The more you
contribute, the more you receive and improve your skills. This is the
principle of exchange upon which the FOSS movement is based. And, last
but not least, women shall not be discouraged when facing difficulties:
believe me, they have been much worst not much time ago.

Give us your opinion...
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Frederick 'FN' Noronha      | http://fn-at-google.notlong.com
Goa, India                  | fred at f5j80yoADFg70aXutYia3IvAJBFvYG5ABCQM0emzZBvzAIqQXwe3WwpGbT19JIOf6526J9nxqUeaaWpx.yahoo.invalid
Co-Founder, BytesForAll     | +91(832)2409490 Cell 9822122436
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