[IndiChix] Chix Semantics

[Vid Ayer]

On Jan 14, 2008 4:21 AM, Tea Beedi <tbd.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> - another one issue is that the pressures on women change a lot with career
> trajectory, level and age. At BCB (bar camp bangalore) last Aug, there was a
> collective on gender, and this came out from peoples' anecdotes about
> getting "older" "settled" "pressures of family, in laws" etc - so gender
> image is still an issue i think.

IMO, pressure exists for everyone (irrespective of gender, age,
country, whatever), albeit they take different manifestations.... and
may depend on factors like family, city/village/town we live or grew
up in, personal goals vis-a-vis family expectations, and so on. I dont
deny that they may (or not) impact lives because in the final analysis
its an individual's will-power that gives a sense of drive and
direction to his/her life. Nothing else matters. YMMV.

Talking of gender images, dunno if anyone noticed this but at the LCIN
BoF i felt that women were outnumbered and at a disadvantage in the
mixed gender gathering.  Simply because women would wait for the men
to finish talking or await their turn (sometimes with a raised hand)
to talk and didnt shout out their opinions like most men did. Now by
the time she gets the opportunity to voice her thoughts, the topic had
moved on which is frustrating to say the least, as meetings by nature
are time bound.

Besides this scenario, getting women to learn to speak their minds
without having to worry about 'what will my friends/colleauges think
if I go against their ideas/wishes/suggestions/say something
different' is another challenge, while hot-stepping between trollish
behaviour and tangential discussions. Calling this a general problem
would be unfair to a lot of men who find group conversations (read,
shouting matches) just as frustrating as I did that day.  Its not a
complaint, just an observation and a generalisation, but an issue
nevertheless. That said, i am not in favor of drastic action like
asking men to be silent spectators or not attend meetings .....
unproductive measures. So how do we work this out ?


> whereas in my india class, gender identity was no big deal.
> (ie - if you are talking about india vs. US, i agree , the engg. education
> system in India is much better

...does women taking to Engg. have anything to do with increased
earning potential and better financial prospects. Cant deny that most
girls (and boys) are encouraged to take up science for this reason
alone....and not to forget, our population (increases competition).


> linuxchix FOSS.in, an american girl in the audience brought up a similar
> comment to yours re. the 41 girls/guys ratio.)

that was Mairin Duffy from Redhat, Boston (i think).

Re: Ratio.... We forget that in every developed nation, there exists a
minimum wage[*1], irrespective of the type of job. Their social
economic systems ensures a person of 15 yrs can earn decent minimum
wages and live a decent life, not extravagant but sustainable at best.
That "dignity of labour" ensures that a person will not want to spend
thousands of dollars and 4-5 years of his/her life getting a CS or PHD
degree after which the hike in pay is marginal. From what I hear its
almost not worth all that trouble unless they truly love the subject
but I may be wrong about this.

[*1] Take the US, where a person is ensured of decent minimum wages
(tied to my previous comment) and their inflation rate has hardly
crossed the 3.0 mark as compared to our inflation rate galloping to a
double digit figure not so long ago, for which our Ivy League educated
FM had a host of <strike>excuses</strike> reasons... Alan Greenspan or
Ben Bernanke would put in their papers, but I digress.


> ps : I can't resist quoting from another list here re. FOSS in India (is

gee, I am not a member but isnt 'silklist' a private list (as in you
may need that individual's permission) ? Not sure if its ok to quote
from there :-)


> Let's put it this way. It has been around more or less for ever.
>
> But the kind of environment that helped the open source / hacker community
> to grow stateside (oh, like internet access, really cheap PCs as a
> percentage of your income.. even someone who is nominally poor has a car, if
> only a beat up old chevy, etc etc) doesn't exist in India.
>
> Nor are any of the Indian colleges a patch on even Iowa State (or whatever)
> in terms of the learning environment.
>
> Then, there's this consistent pressure to earn, earn, earn .. join
> Cognizant, get married, have kids, settle down into a comfortable middle
> class lifestyle - that kind of gets in the way too.
>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

... although he is right :)  i have met men (a handful, fingers of one
hand suffice) who do write code for Free Software while living in
India, not because they will gain monetarily or are employed by MNC-
IT firm or because it looks good on their resume. They do it because
they *want* to.  That's *the* differentiator for me :)


On Jan 14, 2008 10:04 AM, Gayathri Swaminathan <gayathri.swa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> - Encourage members to use Linux distros

I'd say, encourage them to *give* solid contributions to the Free
Software community. TBH, we have many users and few who bother to
actually contribute. In short... many talk, few walk the talk.


> - Mashups of similar interest members - kinda team concept for different OSS
> projects
> - Strive to provide strong Indichix contributions to OSS

+1


> Think having a mixed group of Indichix is healthy
> for the long term establishments of the chapter/ growth.

+1, support to achieve our goals would be fantastic.

-- 
Vid
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