[Techtalk] [OT] HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux

Helen Rosseau hrosseau at vistar.ca
Sun Sep 8 00:01:03 EST 2002


First thing, I did read your article,tonight, and I have passed it along
to my
daughter and a few female friends.  I agree with many of your points but I
guess I am not one of the normal women with no female mentors or lacking
encouragement.  In the early seventies, the best computer teacher at my
highschool was a women, Mrs Norrie.  When, I decided to change my choice
of major at University, I was encouraged to join the engineering branch in
Computer Science. I didn't, but I was encouraged.  I became an electronics
technologist which developed into a system specialist.  I have always had
a love for computers, in all aspects. I was encouraged throughout most of
my carreer to this point, to explore and develop my skills and abilities.
	I agree with most of your comments about the treatment that I
receive from people that I am unfamiliar with and how they perceive me and
my chosen vocation, but after a period of time, they realize that I am
there to do a job because I can. I know that I should be accepted when I
show up, but, it normally takes some time before that happens.
	As to LUGs, I live in Ottawa and check out the local LUG web page
periodically, I haven't found anything that interesting that is advertised
to induce me to attend.  I wasn't even aware of the Linuxchix BOF.
Normally their forum pages are not too informative, and if this is an
example of where they are going or what they want to put across, I can get
more information from the people I work with or from the web.
	I need more experience in Linux, so that I can tweak things to
work exactly the way that I want them to, but I am willing to experiment.
I am not afraid to break things or recompile a kernel.  Time seems to be my biggest problem,
there never seems to be enough. Family and all the commitments that they
bring.
	I think your Howto is very relevant and as I said, I have passed
it on.  Hopefully not inappropriately.  Keep up the good work!

Helen

On Tue, 27 Aug 2002, Val Henson wrote:

> This subject is somewhat off-topic for techtalk, but I wanted a few
> more reviews before I release this HOWTO in the wild.  The list admins
> have given me permission to post this on techtalk, but we ask that you
> keep the "Subject" line exactly the same on your replies so that
> people not interested in this thread can easily delete it.  Thanks!
>
> With the help of many many women, I wrote "HOWTO Encourage Women in
> Linux."  This is mainly a response to all the people at Ottawa Linux
> Symposium who asked me what they could do to encourage women to get
> and stay involved in Linux.  We had a very good discussion at the
> LinuxChix BOF which led to many of the ideas in the HOWTO.
>
> The goal of the HOWTO is to replace that big gnawing empty hole in
> many people's heads entitled "Why the heck are women not interested in
> Linux and what can I do to change it?"  If that's not what it
> accomplishes when you read it, then I need to rewrite it.  Let me know
> what you think!
>
> http://www.nmt.edu/~val/howto.html
>
> It's too big to post on a mailing list - over 40K. :)
>
> -VAL
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