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Programming Announcements GNU is Not Unix IT Technology

EU Funds New FLOSS Survey on Skills, Employment 166

Posted by CowboyNeal from the high-tech-census dept.
rishab writes "The EU-funded FLOSSPOLS project is carrying out a survey of developers worldwide. This is a follow-up to the original FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software) survey in 2002, which was one of the first and most comprehensive surveys of developers - who they are, how they work and why they do it. The new survey aims to provide an update, include new developers, and answer some of the questions that were raised by the first one. In particular, how do developer communities help in learning skills and generating employment, and why is the level of participation by women so low?"
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EU Funds New FLOSS Survey on Skills, Employment More

EU Funds New FLOSS Survey on Skills, Employment

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  • For some odd reason I read "FLOSSPOLS" as "FLOSS PLS". Subliminal messages perhaps?

  • Not for them is it? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Xarius ( 691264 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @07:52PM (#12106086) Homepage
    why is the level of participation by women so low?

    Why is the level of participation of men in, say, nursery school(kindergarten for the Americans), so low?

    Men are good at certain things, Women are good at certain things. Regardless of "Equal Oppurtunities" etc. Men and Women are fundamentally different, see that's why there are different words for them. :P
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Not for them is it? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JesusCigarettes ( 838611 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:03PM (#12106170) Homepage
      Men are good at certain things, Women are good at certain things. Regardless of "Equal Oppurtunities" etc. Men and Women are fundamentally different, see that's why there are different words for them. :P

      Come now. Let's not get caught up in "Well, this is just the way things are, and there's no reason to change" nonsense. According to your argument, the lack of women doctors and CEOs in the 1950s was because men and women are 'inherently different', right? Except that there actually was systematic oppression of women in place to prevent them from succeeding in high-paying professions.

      It may be true that, in general, men are more likely than women to write software. That doesn't mean that the way things are *now* is a perfect representation of how likely women are compared to men. When you grow up believing that only nerdy, quirky women are involved in math and science (as they are often portrayed in movies, etc.) and you want to fit in, you'll avoid those fields even if you really *would* be good at math or science. Likewise, as a male growing up seeing stereotypes of male hairdressers as gay, it's easy to write off being a hairdresser to avoid being typecast as gay.

      Are men and women different? Sure. Men have penises and testicles, and women have vaginas. They're *generally* hormonally different, and *generally* have tendencies toward certain things. That doesn't mean it's useless to examine what factors cause those tendencies, or that it's a good thing that we have self-reinforcing gender stereotypes. Examine behavior rationally - fuck this homebrew "common sense" unscientific bullshit.
      • Are men and women different? Sure. Men have penises and testicles, and women have vaginas. They're *generally* hormonally different, and *generally* have tendencies toward certain things. That doesn't mean it's useless to examine what factors cause those tendencies, or that it's a good thing that we have self-reinforcing gender stereotypes. Examine behavior rationally - fuck this homebrew "common sense" unscientific bullshit.

        And this is where you shoot yourself in the foot. Those same hormones that cause

        • and pretending something else is true because you want it to be is intellectually dishonest.

          And at the same time, you must also look at the social factors behind why women and men do different things. It's not all hormones.

          When toy company creates a Barbie doll with unrealistic boobs that says "I hate math", it does have some influence on how young children perceive gender.

          I know you don't think it's all hormones, but I thought I would just clear this up :)

          • Re:Not for them is it? (Score:1, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward
            Social factors are valid consideration, such can not be disputed by anyone; however, the idea that societal impositions may even aspire to play a role even approaching that of physical reality (chemical and structural differences aiding certain types of thought are the central factors that guide individual's development of aptitudes-especially with regard to the exceptions of ignorant gender-based roles) is pure foolishness.
            • Actually studies are showing that brain structure/chemistry IS affected by your eviroment. This is why blind people have more sensitive hearing or touch for example. Both genetics and enviroment are very important factors in our developement. The brain is very malleable, and your surrounding play a big part of the "shape" it takes.

            • Re:Not for them is it? (Score:1, Informative)

              by Anonymous Coward
              Little girls are taught from a very early age that the most important thing in life is to be beautiful and desirable, to the exclusion of just about everything else. Little girls are not publicly rewarded for their mathematical abilities and rarely encouraged to develop them. It takes a lot of courage to swim against this tide, believe me, I am a female software engineer and I know. Yes, the social influences--not our hormones--are keeping women from enjoying careers in math, science, and technology.
              • To be fair, there are societal influences on both sides -- People want their children to grow up to be athletes, doctors or lawyers, not wrench jockeys, mathematicians, or engineers!

          • Sorry, but it takes a screwed up woman to look at a childs toy and compare herself physically to it. How many women have had to deal with the horrible fact that they have nipples? Barbie doesn't have them!

            Feminists are grasping at straws.
            • Sorry, but it takes a screwed up woman to look at a childs toy and compare herself physically to it.

              Actually the original poster was talking about the influence of such toys on young children.
              There's also the effect of adults precieving young children differently depending on if they think a child is a boy or a girl.
            • The Barbie is just one example.

              You cannot ignore the social factors behind a child's mental development. I'm certain that you played with toys when you were a kid, and that those toys have had been influential in your development as a person.
        • Now im not saying women cant be programmers -- ive met some damn good ones -- but they are less predisposed to technical work -- What does "predisposed" mean? Before technology, there was no "technological work." Are you saying there was some evolutionary pressure, during the few thousand years that humans have had culture, for males to develop more technological ability than females? If not, where would this predisposition come from? I also want to point out that "technological work" is a relative term.
          • Aptitude due to efficiency of the function of the thoughts required for performance of particular work as derived from the biology of the male causes a greater advantage to be had than that of the female whose individual biology must provide for the same advantage or account for and allow equal or superior capacity. The male, due to the preponderance of the gender in that type of work, has an advantage-and as this advantage has continued through the period of equalisation between the genders, it is either b
          • What does "predisposed" mean? Before technology, there was no "technological work." Are you saying there was some evolutionary pressure, during the few thousand years that humans have had culture, for males to develop more technological ability than females?

            What method is available to show if a piece of flint was knapped by a man or a woman? Or for that matter any piece of prehistoric technology.
            Note that gender roles and stereotypes tend to be most common in industrial societies. But are rarely completly
        • "Those same hormones that cause sex differentiation cause structural differences in the brain as well. . . they are less predisposed to technical work -- and pretending something else is true because you want it to be is intellectually dishonest."

          What are the structural differences, and what makes you think they affect "technical work"? There are other explanations for the small number of women, why should anyone buy yours?

        • And this is where you shoot yourself in the foot. Those same hormones that cause sex differentiation cause structural differences in the brain as well.

          This should be quite simple to test. Have someone identify if a set of MRI's come from a man's or a woman's brain.
          Where this theory runs into problems is that function, even structure, of mammalian brains is also affected by environment. e.g. it's been shown that the left brain/right brain split differs between Japanese and Europeans.

      • Re:Not for them is it? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Xarius ( 691264 )
        "According to my logic?"

        I said no such thing. We pretty much have a society, now, where women and men *cannot* be discriminated against when going for jobs and whatnot.

        Women simply aren't attracted to computer jobs, for whatever reasons I don't care. Why do we need to attract women to these jobs? To balance some fictional scale until women and men have equal 50% representation in every imaginable job?

        If a woman seriously wants a job in computing, then there is no reason whatsoever that she cannot get one

        • Re:Not for them is it? (Score:5, Informative)

          by deacent ( 32502 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @09:35PM (#12106728)
          As a woman who codes and went to an engineering university, I can testify that to that there are social factors that do dissuade girls and young women from going into technical fields. For one thing, there are few scientifically-inclined female role models. I don't know about you, but when I think of a female scientist stereotype, I have this vision of a cold, austere looking woman, which doesn't even remotely describe me or any of my female peers.

          While growing up, I had adults and peers alike (not all of them, of course) treat me as if I'm some sort of freak for showing an interest in computers. Others would treat me like I was some sort of idiot who was incapable of doing the assigned work myself. When you're trying to fit in, it's easier to find a new interest than to endure those attitudes. It took several tries with my guidance councelor to get her to put together my records to submit to the college I went to because she kept questioning if I really wanted to do this. Not exactly a morale booster.

          When I got to college, the male to female ratio was 6 : 1. Not only was there the minority of guys who hit on every girl they came into contact with (a few strayed over into sexual harassment), but there were very few girls who could sympathize with you.

          If you are assertive, you're labeled a bitch. When you go for jobs, there are people who think, "Well, she's going to want to start a family soon, so I'd better not go with her; she's going to be undependable", without having any evidence of her dependability.

          No, can't see why any young woman would have a problem going into a science field with those conditions. Any attempt to make science seem "girl-friendly" is doomed as long as the situtations that I mention are common enough. It's a cheap marketing ploy at best.

          Having said all of that, I am a strong believer of matching the person to the position. I don't care if your advantage comes from your natural talent, physical build, education, experience, personality, etc. but, it had better be an honest match. You lose a lot when you confuse your assumptions with reality.

          • When you go for jobs, there are people who think, "Well, she's going to want to start a family soon, so I'd better not go with her; she's going to be undependable"

            This is why paternity leave is so vital to even out the marketplace. If companies have to pay for (and accept) the loss of their male employees in just the same way, it puts them on an equal footing. I live in France, where they have this in place, and I think it's a wonderful thing.

            Also, with regards to gender "roles": In the companies I wo

            • This is why paternity leave is so vital to even out the marketplace. If companies have to pay for (and accept) the loss of their male employees in just the same way, it puts them on an equal footing.

              Note that it does have to be an level of leave. Including issues like who pays. Even with this there is still the issue of Stay at Home parents even which parent does a school call first with a sick or injured child.
          • When you go for jobs, there are people who think, "Well, she's going to want to start a family soon, so I'd better not go with her; she's going to be undependable", without having any evidence of her dependability.

            Quite likely an employer would get in trouble if the asked that question directly. Possibly from they experience that is a real risk...
            • Huh? If any prospective employer ever indicated that I couldn't take time off to take care of my kids I'd have my resume back out so fast the paper would be smoking. This should NOT be a gender issue. This is a parental issue. Thank Ghu Minnesota has a law that allows both parents to take 6 weeks unpaid leave after the birth of a child. That first 12 weeks makes all the difference for the kids.
          • As a woman who codes and went to an engineering university, I can testify that to that there are social factors that do dissuade girls and young women from going into technical fields. For one thing, there are few scientifically-inclined female role models. I don't know about you, but when I think of a female scientist stereotype, I have this vision of a cold, austere looking woman, which doesn't even remotely describe me or any of my female peers.

            I'm shocked every time I hear this crap. Role model? Who

            • Re:Not for them is it? (Score:2, Informative)

              by deacent ( 32502 )

              I'm shocked every time I hear this crap. Role model? Who the fuck needs a role model? I can't do homework because I don't have a role model?

              Of course you don't need to have a role model to do homework. Maybe role model was a bad choice of words. The point is, girls are often given the impression that if they go into science, they'll end up as humorless, ugly, old maids.

              Through college I was always harassed by idiots who couldn't do their work. The guys pretended like we were friends, the girls flirted.

          • While growing up, I had adults and peers alike (not all of them, of course) treat me as if I'm some sort of freak for showing an interest in computers.

            Welcome to life. :P
        • How about turning the question.

          Generally, if you're a keyboard monkey - no one cares much about how you look.

          A nice appearance on the other hand often means a person can earn more money for less work.

          Those "cushy" jobs are generally not worrying about pointer math and proper object destruction.

          So "nice looking people" migh be tempted away from computer jobs.

          Now consider this:

          As long as women WANT to "marry UP" and can get away with it (and who wouldn't) they will always find themselves in relationship
          • As long as women WANT to "marry UP" and can get away with it (and who wouldn't) they will always find themselves in relationships which work better if the male is the workaholic.

            This also has the effect of meaning that average figures for men's earnings will tend to be greater than average figures of women's earnings. Which is something about which a lot of fuss is made.
            It is also possible that the average amount of money available for a woman to spend is greater than the average amount of money availabl
        • The 'we need 50% representation' attitude coming from feminists is completely morally wrong (sexist against men), if women dont want to do IT, dont pressure them.

          A great example of (ficticious) affermative action (a result from PC pressure groups such as feminists) is here [theregister.co.uk] (BOFH from theregister.co.uk)
      • I'm completely against gender discrimination.

        I am also completely against changinf science or engineering to give it more "girl appeal". Doing so will stop science/engineering being what it is.The worst possible scenario is some sort of state intervention that applies quotas (eg. 40% of your proggrammers gotta be female to get a tax cut).

        Analogy: 90%+ of cosmetics are bought by females for their own use.. Imagine if the state said that they had to sell at least 40% of their cosmetics to men. It would destro

      • nonsense, just because I call someone black doesn't mean I'm being raciest.

        There's a distinct right-brain left-brain difference between men and Women, this makes it easier for Woman to process languages and Men to process visual abstractions like programming.

        This show up as:
        9 time more men are affected with Dyslexia than women [alphabetmats.com].

        Gay men read maps like women [newscientist.com]

        Male-Female Brain Differences [brainplace.com].
      • Who cares? Why push Women into tech? What will it get anyone? Money? Encourage them to go into business and sales if that is the goal. That is more stable and safer from offshoring.
      • Men have penises and testicles, and women have vaginas.

        You forgot breasts.

        On that note, I learned everything I need to know in kindergarten :)
      • It may be true that, in general, men are more likely than women to write software. That doesn't mean that the way things are *now* is a perfect representation of how likely women are compared to men.

        Nor does it prove that "the way things are now" is not a reasonable representation. Neither side can "prove" that the actual ratio is or isn't where it "should" be (for some arbitrary definition of "should"). However, claiming that it "should" be 50/50 for everything is, you seem to agree, inane and ignorant
        • But once we've eliminated gender discrimination (both against AND FOR, including the ridiculous idea that both genders are identical), it will tend toward that point on its own.

          That isn't likely to happen for quite a while. Gender discrimination is complex, different discriminations interact with each other, things such as "peer-backed" discrimination tend to be ignored and there are plenty of advocates of all sorts of discrimination...
          • That isn't likely to happen for quite a while. Gender discrimination is complex, different discriminations interact with each other, things such as "peer-backed" discrimination tend to be ignored and there are plenty of advocates of all sorts of discrimination...

            True, it's not easy. And many may find it hard to cope with this, but it's not a problem that can be handled on an institutional level. You have to first address the problem yourself, within yourself. When YOU are judging a person not on the ba
      • Are men and women different? Sure. Men have penises and testicles, and women have vaginas. They're *generally* hormonally different, and *generally* have tendencies toward certain things.

        Neither men nor woman are a homogeneous group. Even if X has mostly men interested in it that dosn't mean that it isn't perfectly normal for women to also be interested in it.

        That doesn't mean it's useless to examine what factors cause those tendencies, or that it's a good thing that we have self-reinforcing gender ster

    • Re:Not for them is it? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The concept of equality, it seems, is endanger in the minds of some by reading comments on the natural differences between men and women aside from reproduction. You, however, are correct as the differences are not limited to only that scope-as the Harvard professor who was similarly defamed for similar comment, the functions most efficiently completed by the brains of males and females are not the same. The aptitudes that generate based on individual differences are varied, yes, but they are to a significa

    • Re:Not for them is it? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by EnronHaliburton2004 ( 815366 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:18PM (#12106248) Homepage Journal
      The users of the OSTG sites are 97% male [ostg.com]. Slashdot demographics are probably very similar.

      With such an overwhelmingly male audience, you're not going to get a serious discussion on gender equity here unfortunately.

      It's a bit of an echo chamber in here.

    • Re:Not for them is it? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Jemm ( 747958 )
      "why is the level of participation by women so low?"

      The most obvious reason why women may be discouraged from writing software is the attitude they face from a predominantly male group.

      Have you ever wandered into one of those D&D gaming stores just to see what the fuss is all about. In general, these places make you feel about as welcome as George Bush in Canada. Well that is basically the reception women get from any technical gathering.

      Seriously, who wouldn't walk away from that.
      • Such then is the situation. The individuals who gather in many areas in the institutions training for these matters happen to be males, but the primary characteristic is that they for the majority do not care what others think, and wish to work for a collective or at least community benefit. These individuals then, act as they choose to. They are dominant in the area, and there are other areas of occupations and of hobbies-so, for those who do not wish to adapt to those behaviors-do not enter those hobbies.
    • Men are good at certain things, Women are good at certain things. Regardless of "Equal Oppurtunities" etc. Men and Women are fundamentally different, see that's why there are different words for them. :P

      It is because of this attitude, gental readers, that we don't have more women involved in computer programmming in general, and FLOSS in specific.

      Yaz.

    • Re:Not for them is it? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ScrappyTheObscure ( 82234 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @09:33PM (#12106709) Homepage
      Being a woman and a programmer I have paid a fair amount of attention to the question of why I'm so rare in the field.

      I really believe that the US's answers to this question are all youth-culture socially ingrained. The educational system doesn't have any way of providing anything like the roll models or mentoring or enough ways of reaching any really smart kid with aptitude who is socialized out of much of anything.

      That's a gender-neutral way of saying US youth culture would have to change in order to alter this here. Enough other limiting factors have been removed, I think that's the last one and the biggest.

      I have Indian coworkers who tell me that when they went to university, 1/3 of the slots in the science programs were reserved for women, 2/3 for men. The women, in their experience, may not look like they're going to be dominant, but are usually contenders for the very best grades.

      I take that as (admittedly anecdotal) evidence that a much larger # of women could participate in computing and succeed if only they were not receiving some sort of short circuit early that kills interest.

      Anyhow, ok, I'll grant women are different from men, but that doesn't mean the industry doesn't need to find a way to draw them in. We're just as smart as men and different is GOOD.

      Or when was the last time you worked in a seriously multicultural office? Different world views and thought patterns make for constructive and healthy workplaces.
    • Just a note of random empirical evidence from recent teaching experience. The course was for undergrads learning functional programming, after 1 to 3 courses of C++ or Java. There were definitely some top notch female students that had no problem whatsoever wrapping their brains around recursion. These were not library types - way cute and way smart - and often topped most of the males in the class. There was little observable difference between the top female and male students.
      • Would i be correct in guessing there were more not-top male students than not-top female students?

        The very blunt way of putting this (i wish i could think of a better word because its not what i mean): Women good at IT are freaks

  • FLOSS (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For the Love O god Someone Shower! Then you'll get the women.
  • Haven't we known about the benefits of FLOSSing for a long time? Man, talk about irrelavent studies...
  • Maybe men are most likely to go look at some fetish porn on the internet after each 5 hours of work so they're more on the computer.

  • Hmmm (Score:4, Funny)

    by Neil Blender ( 555885 ) <neilblender@gmail.com> on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:00PM (#12106148)
    Do other countries think it's funny to put [United States] in alphabetical order in a country drop down list instead of index 1 where it belongs no matter what?

    • Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Funny)

      by rokzy ( 687636 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:11PM (#12106214)
      yes we think it's hilarious. we often screen videos of dumb Americans bouncing on the down arrow key at the weekly meetings of the "No USAians" club.

      so far none of them have realised you can press the 'U' key.

      the funniest ones are where they get all the way to countries beginning with the letter 'H', stopping to read and think about each one, before finally realising it's alphabetical and they can just scroll until countries beginning with 'U' appear.

      when you guys finally figure out our plot, we'll start putting the USA in random places.
      • Well I outwitted your nefarious scheme. I put an entry in my usercontent.css to always make the name United States show up in its God given colors of red, white, and blue. With blink tags!

    • Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I can only assume it's done because.

      1: Americans don't know that other countries exist.
      2: The Ameican government doesn't want Americans to know that other countries exist.
      3: Americans don't know the alphabet.
      4: Americans can't spell.
      5: Americans can't read.
      6: Anyone that can't read, spell, doesn't know the alphabet or any geography might as well be an American.
    • It's our little revenge for all those boneheaded forms where, even after you specify a small european country from a list provided, it still requires state to be filled in, and that post code and phone numbers are in US format.

  • 45 questions. ... eek! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by EnronHaliburton2004 ( 815366 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:08PM (#12106205) Homepage Journal
    Well, I started to take the survey... I was at question 11 when I realized that there are 45 questions to answer ... holy shit. Not sure I have time to answer all of these ...
  • ...When I can't get past the first page.

    The thing is broken.

  • Seven Years (Score:3, Funny)

    by bstadil ( 7110 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:16PM (#12106238) Homepage
    Let's see if the EU can beat the Americans and report back before 2012.

  • my first reaction (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ChipMonk ( 711367 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:32PM (#12106319) Journal
    Tell them to take a flying leap off a cliff. The EU is moving to destroy FLOSS with their innovation-stifling software patents. The only thing I'm willing to tell them about my use of FLOSS is, "You can't pirate what's given away for free."
    • Out of curiosity, where are you from? I'm just hoping it's not the US, or your comment is destined for a +5 Funny.

      That said; I agree with your stance on software patents. Canada, where I'm from, thankfully doesn't yet have them (knock on wood) and Japan, where I live, has them but under the restriction that the invention to be patented must be "a creation of technical ideas utilizing a law of nature", which is probably about as fair as patents for non-software devices/processes.

  • The Lack of Women (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jameth ( 664111 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:33PM (#12106326)
    The lack of women in the computer programming field really is one of those oddities. The 2002 survey says 1.1% of FLOSS developers are female. That's less than the portion of women in construction. The construction field definitely has discrimination against women and extremely commonly has a hostile work environment.

    By contrast, there's no clear reason why women shouldn't be in CS. The most likely possibility is still that it's a cultural norm, but that doesn't exactly explain why more women would be involved in construction than in CS. It might be a hostile climate, but I would be surprised if the male coders are more aggressive and sexually biased than the average guys on a construction crew. It's really quite a strange situation.

    - http://www.theallineed.com/women/05031804.htm [theallineed.com]
    "Currently, women workers make up nearly 10 percent of the construction industry or more than 900,000 nationally"
    • "Currently, women workers make up nearly 10 percent of the construction industry or more than 900,000 nationally"

      Worked in new home construction from 12 to about 18, never once saw a woman framer, plumber, electrition, roofer, sider, landscaper....

      Architect... check. The company that we got plans from did have a few women on staff, one or maybe two in design positions.

      Also, we did use a cabinent crew that had a woman in it.

      Soooo, 2 or three out of a thousand? Two thousand? Something like that.

      Those st
      • I've seen those stats several places, so I'm fairly sure there is so truth to them. In general, from what I recall of an NPR interview a couple years back, it's all heavily skewed by a minority of the construction companies, so you could still easily be in construction and not notice. There are a few companies that fire quite a lot of women. Also, there are a couple companies (they mentioned two in the interview, so at least a couple) that are all women construction companies.

        In general, although the only
    • If by construction you mean physical jobs, thats because women have generally smaller, weaker bodies than men (scientific fact - find an average girl who can beat me (average bloke) at anything strength related)

      I suppose women in CS being less than woman in construction is odd, but maybe there are biological reasons to which feminists/'the PC crowd' refuse to accept.
  • Seriously, I wish IT wasn't such a sausage fest, but when the dominant cohort is so into such 'offensive-to-females' stuff as Python, HHG, Scifi/Fantasy in general, and poor hygiene, it's unfortunately no surprise that it is.

    I have met four females in my lifetime that didn't hate Python (the troupe, not necessarily the language). I am related to two of them. Conversely, I have no interest in unicorns, clothing designers or shiny bits of carbon.

    ps: just in case you're a complete dink and take the Subject

  • Why is this an issue?? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by psykocrime ( 61037 ) <mindcrime@cpphac ... co.uk minus city> on Thursday March 31, 2005 @09:49PM (#12106794) Homepage Journal
    I don't see any studies coming out asking "Why is the percentage of women so low amongst asphalt pouring crews" or anything like that. I also don't see any studies asking whey more men aren't going into nursing.

    Why do we seem to have this societal obsession with getting more women into computer science / engineering, etc? Maybe, just maybe, it's the case that most women just don't *want* to be computer scientists or engineers. I mean, do we have hoardes of women protesting that they tried to get into this field and were discriminated against on a sexual basis (hint: no)?

    The opportunities are there for women who *do* want to do this kind of stuff. So tell me again why this "issue" keeps coming up time and time again??
    • > I don't see any studies coming out asking "Why is
      > the percentage of women so low amongst asphalt
      > pouring crews" or anything like that. I also
      > don't see any studies asking whey more men aren't
      > going into nursing.

      You aren't looking very hard.
      • You aren't looking very hard.

        That is correct. This topic isn't something I've really made a point to invest a lot of time into studying.

        That said, do you have some info you'd like to share with us? Are there really studies questioning why more women aren't pouring asphalt and more men aren't nurses?
    • Ironcally, this comment on my page is showing up immediately below the comment with this link here:

      http://www.theallineed.com/women/05031804.htm [theallineed.com]

      People *are* asking.
    • I don't see any studies coming out asking "Why is the percentage of women so low amongst asphalt pouring crews" or anything like that. I also don't see any studies asking whey more men aren't going into nursing.

      A lot of the time the people selecting the criteria involved have their own sets of biases. You are equally unlikely to see claims about women being "under-represented" in the prison population or men being "under-represented" in the "stay at home spouse" population.

      Why do we seem to have this so

    • Its confusion. I've worked with a couple women in the computer field, and I found them on average equal to the average man in the field. I haven't done a statistical study, but I tend to believe that by any statistical measure they are equal. That is they are as likely to be better than me as any other man is, and as likely to be worse than me as any other man would be.

      I've worked construction. It is a fact that the women I worked with did not have the physical strength to do the job like I could.

  • But I left out the context of what I was replying to:

    why is the level of participation by women so low?

  • Why Fewer Women (Score:4, Informative)

    by matria ( 157464 ) on Friday April 01, 2005 @12:26AM (#12107758)
    As a grandmother, who's been pretty much on my own for learning how to program, and wasn't allowed to have a computer "to waste time and money on" until my husband decided that HE could use one, I can tell you immediately why there are fewer women in FOSS development.

    Most FOSS projects start as an after-work (or school), spare-time project. Most women work, and even working women are expected to handle housework, shopping, and child care after work. Where is the spare time left for anything else?
    • Having been raised by three generations of hardworking women, this is totally correct. We geeks can have nothing by high-minded ideals, but the fact of the matter is that software developement requires a huge investment of time. You want to talk about cultural bias? Why is it that there's a general expectation of women to take care of things men deem themselves too important to trifle with? How many male programmers are able to write code, do laundry, fix perhaps more than one meal, tend to young childre
    • My nephew was always given interesting building toys and computer games like Sim City/Sim this/Sim that. He was encouraged to tinker. He also took piano lessons. My neice is given Barbie dolls and Dora stuff. She loves to have the dolls engage each other in conversation. She takes dance class. One is very likely to become some form of computer geek or engineer. The other is very likely to do something a little more socially involved.

      The stereotypes start with mom and dad the day they choose pink or blue.

    • And men are not expected to help with housework, shopping and child care after work? that is a very messed up household.

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