discuss: Encouraging Diversity in Linux (was: Review needed of 'Encourage Women in Linux' HOWTO)
Subject:
Re: Encouraging Diversity in Linux (was: Review needed of 'Encourage Women in Linux' HOWTO)
From:
Rick Moen ####@####.####
Date:
7 Dec 2003 04:35:28 -0000
Message-Id: <20031207043527.GA9850@linuxmafia.com>
Quoting David Horton ####@####.####
> How about expanding the scope of the document and titling it
> "Encouraging Diversity in Linux?"
That might be a worthwhile document. However, it would be a
fundamentally different one from top to bottom. You might want to
volunteer to write it as an addition.
> Why should we only seek to encourage people based on gender?
Well, I for one do not in fact encourage people's participation based
_only_ on their sexes. I doubt the LDP does, either. It has a HOWTO
addressing the problem, which is plausibly claimed to be systemic and
serious, of discouragement of women's participation. I certainly
wouldn't disparage some differently-focussed document; for one thing, it
doesn't yet exist.
I'm suddenly remembering Bastille Day, 1998, when I was helping SVLUG
staff the famous Santa Clara "Future of Linux" panel event, which to our
astonishment drew 1000 members of the public.
http://www.svlug.org/events/future-199807-reviews.shtml
Linux coder Tabinda Khan was there, too. When she was out in the lobby,
some guys asked her to please go get refills for their coffee -- and
then seemed to have a hard time grasping that she was interested in
Linux and not food-service staff. (Tabinda took this in good grace.)
Nobody took the Mexican-Americans in attendance to be food staff. Nobody
assumed the teenagers present were only looking for a video game room.
Just Tabinda, because she was one of the very few women present not
(like Lisa Bowman) recognisable as IT reporters.
You could guess it was a fluke, and that the other categories you
mentioned were equally susceptible to the same assumption. But, here's
the thing: I'm pretty sure, from very long observation, that such turns
out not to be the case.
--
Cheers, "A Discordian is a Taoist with a very strange sense of humour
Rick Moen and the inability to sit still."
####@####.#### -- Rabbi Kwan Chi Sun Lieberwitz, _Jews for Buddha Cabal_
