Why are there so few women in Linux?
I'm not sure how many of you have mandrake 9.1 or have the docs installed but I was searching for user permission documentation and saw this nice little doc titled "Why are there so few women in Linux?" now
if I was a chick I would probably be offended but it does offer some valid points that Linux is a male dominated
environment.
If you have the docs installed check it out here file:/usr/share/doc/HOWTO/HTML/en/Encourage-Women-Linux/x106.html
Some of the highlights of the article:
2.1. Women are less confident
Quote:
Women severely underestimate their abilities in many areas, but especially with respect to computers. One study about this topic is Undergraduate Women in Computer Science: Experience, Motivation, and Culture:
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~gendergap/p.../sigcse97.html
For example, while 53% of the male computer science freshman rated themselves as highly prepared for their CS courses, 0% of the female CS freshman rated themselves similarly. But at the end of the year, 6 out the 7 female students interviewed had either an A or B average. Objective ratings (such as grade point averages or quality and speed of programming) don't agree with most women's self-estimation. I personally encountered this phenomenon: Despite plenty of objective evidence to the contrary, including grades, time spent on assignments, and high placement in a programming contest, I still didn't consider myself to be at the top of my class in college. Looking back objectively, it seems clear to me that I was performing as well or better than many of the far more confident men in my class.
2.2. Women have fewer opportunities for friendship or mentoring
Quote:
Like any other discipline, computer science is easier to learn when you have friends and mentors to ask questions of and form a community with. However, for various reasons, men usually tend to mentor and become friends with other men. When the gender imbalance is as large as it is in computer science, women find themselves with few or no other women to share their interests with. While women have male friends and mentors, it's often harder and more difficult for women to find a community and then to fit in with it. Many women leave the field who would have stayed if they had been male.
It's true that this is a feedback loop, fewer women in computing leads to fewer women in computing. It's important to understand that this feedback loop causes women to leave computing who wouldn't have left if, all other things being equal, they had been men. This is important because male classmates often assume their female counterparts leave the field because they "just aren't good enough." Women's low self-estimation contributes to this false impression.
2.5. Lack of female role models
Quote:
Women in computing do exist, but most people aren't lucky enough to meet a female computer scientist. Women are socialized to be modest and avoid self-promotion, which makes them even less visible than they might otherwise be. Mothers and female schoolteachers regularly protest that they don't know anything about computers. As a result, girls grow up without examples of women who are either competent or confident with computers. I encourage all women in computing to be as visible as possible--accept all interviews, take credit publicly--even when you don't want to. You may be embarrassed, but by allowing yourself to be publicized or promoted, you might change a young girl's life.
2.9. Reasons women avoid Linux specifically
Quote:
Linux development is more competitive and fierce than most areas of programming. Often, the only reward (or the major reward) for writing code is status and the approval of your peers. Far more often, the "reward" is a scathing flame, or worse yet, no response at all. Since women are socialized to not be competitive and avoid conflict, and since they have low self-confidence to begin with, Linux and open source in general are even more difficult than most areas of computing for women to get and stay involved in.
Again these are just some highlights of the doc that was provided. I thought it was kind of humours and they did have some valid points. I only know of a couple girls at my college that are hard core programmers I'm gonna mention this to them to see what they say tommorow but if they're are any womens on this board what do you think about this?