Beth pointed me to an interesting Linux HOWTO: HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux. It's well written and makes many good points, as well as giving some interesting insight. I really only have a few comments about it.
My biggest complaint is that it is limited to how to encourage women once they get into Linux. It says nothing about how to get women into Linux (and LUGs) in the first place. It's all well and good to tell people how to treat women once you attract them, but, frankly, If you don't have any women in it, knowing how to keep them in the LUG isn't very helpful.
A few comments on what she said:
The implicit argument here is that women are genetically predetermined from conception to not be interested in computers.
Not really. I think that this is a case of why blame on parent's DNA what you can blame on their parenting skills: it's more likely that women aren't socialized to be interested in computers. As the author herself points out, "for whatever reason, few women have the endless interest in minutiae that men often display." Computers almost necessarily involve endless amounts of minutiae. Now it may be only so bad so that it doesn't surpass all women's threshold for minutiae, and hence those women are in computers, but it's hard to consider the knowledge of the syntax for manually configuring your ethernet card (for when something screws up and you have to boot up with init=/bin/bash) anything but minutiae. Now for some it is extremely minute, and for others less so -- I suspect that among both genders this plays a large part in the dividing line of who gets interested in computers and who doesn't -- but if women, "for whatever reason", are generally bored by endless minutiae, this means that they are going to be bored with computers. If not, please justifying knowing that /dev/random gives random numbers based on system entropy and /dev/urandom gives random numbers from a deterministic random algorithm seeded by the entropy in the system, and so if you want really random numbers but are willing to wait for pauses as the system gathers entropy, use /dev/random, and if you don't need that level of randomness, use /dev/urandom as practical knowledge. If the syntax of for loops in bash isn't minutiae, this is the first time that I've heard about it.
But if you don't get into these sorts of things, what do you mean by saying that you use linux? Computers are useful because they are so complex -- they allow us to do complex but repetitive tasks quickly, but the trade-off is that we have to learn to deal with the minutiae necessary to do so precisely.
I can only speak from very limited experience, but I've never seen a woman who was interested in computers but unable to learn. Rather, I've seen a lot of women who aren't interested in learning the huge collection of endless minutiae which allows one to become adept at using a computer as a power-user. I doubt that this has much to do with genetic predisposition. Indeed, I don't even think that it has all that much to do with propensities for minutiae, because I think that even women who disclaim such interest have it latently and that it can be aroused in them without too much difficulty. No, I think that the real reason that women aren't generally interested in computers is that they aren't socialized to have the correct amounts of ambition and arrogance.
Next to dating partners or spouses, computers are the most frustrating things on earth, so you have to really want them in order to survive the frustrating. You need to have a strong and burning desire to put up with the aggravation that computers deliver. And you have to be arrogant enough not to give up. Computers often seem impossible to deal with (I say this as one who's been a programming hobbyist for the last 6 years). They're phenomenally complex, and when trying to figure out what's wrong either with programs or with code that you're writing, you have to somehow look at a system with hundreds of thousands of variables (taking the system as a whole), and somehow have the arrogance to think that you can get your head around this and solve it. You have to have the arrogance to think that even if others have failed, even if you have failed, you're good enough to do it. Very importantly, you're better than the computer, and by extension, than the people who wrote the software that you're trying to get to work. Their error message doesn't mean that you can't do it, it just means that you haven't figured out their hair-brained nonsense yet.
This was alluded to in the discussion of confidence, but really, I think that arrogance is a better term for it. Computers (as the creations of people and hence, in an odd way, as extensions of them) put users down all the time. To really master a computer, you have to be arrogant enough to say "Fuck you" to the computer and beat the damn thing into submission.
Women have fewer opportunities for friendship or mentoring
This is actually a really vicious circle. Unfortunately, the only way that I see out of this is for women already in computing to double or triple their efforts at outreach to younger females. I have a strong suspicion that females willing (or eager) to take on male mentors would succeed at computers anyway (I think that taking on a male mentor signals a certain level of self-confidence that's probably high enough to succeed on her own). Don't get me wrong: mentors help indescribably. If nothing else, they give emotional support to get through the nearly unbearable frustration of learning computers. However, drinking from a fountain of knowledge is also very useful in speeding up the process of learning.
Sure, if you're lucky, no one ever explicitly told you that you couldn't work with computers because you were a girl, but every time you raised your voice, an adult told you to quiet down, while the boy next to you continued to shriek.
I think that this is slightly oversimplified -- boys are much more likely to ignore our parents and get punished for it, I think -- but it leaves a tantalizing question unanswered: is there anything that males can do to fix this problem? I know from experience that it doesn't work to just tell women (repeatedly) to speak up if they have anything to say. One would think that the 23rd time that you say it might convince them that you actually mean it, but the conditioning seems too strong (alternatively, women are conditioned to hear "please, if you have anything to say, interrupt me and just say it -- things work much more smoothly if we're all just willing to interrupt each other at appropriate times" as something else, perhaps like, "I'm giving lip service to caring about what you have to say". Not having been socialized as a female, I have no idea. Yet I try to always be literally truthful and to have a reputation for it (life is much easier when you say what you mean and people believe that you mean what you say). Information on how to help overcome this socialization in women would be very helpful.
The most striking example of a subtle bias against computing for women is that, in the U.S. at least, the family computer is more likely to be kept in a boy's room than in a girl's room.
Note to self: put a computer in every child's bedroom, and be careful that if one gets it before the other for age reasons, to be explicit about that.
We all know that most computer games are written by and for men.
Look, this is a problem, but it can really only be fixed by women. How the hell are male game designers supposed to intuitively know what women want well enough to make a good female-oriented game? It's time for some woman with gumption and creativity to step up to the plate and start a software company dedicated to making female-oriented games. You don't need all-female programmers or anything like that. All you need is for the game designers to be female. However, until that happens, the best efforts that you're going to see in female-oriented games are shoot-em-ups with unrealistic women with large breasts in pink boxes where you get to choose from one of 13 outfits and 8 hairstyles for the aforementioned buxom females. How are men supposed to know what resonates in a woman's soul if it's different than what resonates in ours?
How can an industry that views company-sponsored gangbangs as somehow appropriate
We don't need to go any further than this. A company which views company-sponsored orgies as appropriate is just really screwed up. We as a society don't provide the benefits of incorporation in order to make some people's sex lives easier. This is one of those things which is simply wrong in and of itself.
That being said, this isn't very useful information. It's not like many of us go to those orgies, so continuing to not go to them isn't going to send a very strong message.
Advertising, media say computers are for men
The next time you see a computer ad featuring a person, pay attention to that person's gender.
Actually, this is one that I've wondered about. I've suggested to Beth that she and the other female in their local LUG should put up posters featuring their faces to help get the message out that there are in fact females in their LUG (preferably in some manner a little more subtle than text next to their pictures saying "See, women? There are actual females in the group, so you don't have to be as intimidated about coming -- as for the guys, they both have boyfriends"). Might something like this help in attracting women to try out the idea of coming to a LUG meeting?
While this is another misperception, women generally are less willing to obsess on one topic, preferring to lead a more balanced life.
This actually has a rather long and rich history, but only extraordinarily exceptional people ever become masters of a subject without obsessing on it. Now, it is not very important whether people become very good with Linux or masters of it, but this does play into the role model issue. All human beings need balance, of course. From what I gather, the big names in Linux kernel development actually have families and spend non-trivial amounts of time with their families and away from their computers. Yet at the same time, I suspect that they were more obsessive on their way to greatness than once they got there. There's a lot to learn on your way to pick up a specialty.
If there are never any women willing to obsess enough to masters (and though I don't know it, I suspect that there in fact are women willing to become suitably obsessed and have become masters), what will women do for role models? To my knowledge there are no women in charge of any of the glamorous Linux kernel subsystems, and there are no women in charge of any of the glamorous projects (gnome, gimp, samba, apache, XFree86 DRI, etc.).
Part of the problem, I believe, is that "master" is partially an absolute term but largely a relative one. And, all things being equal, a person who obsesses will always be more skilled than a person who doesn't. Now, it might work to wait for a woman to come along who doesn't obsess but has enough of an advantage in natural talent that she becomes a master in the world of Linux et al. However, this may not be a safe bet -- as I understand it men tend to be exceptional more often than women, always on both ends of the spectrum: men are more likely either to be a genius or an idiot than women are. This says nothing about an individual man or an individual woman, but if you're playing a statistical game, statistics are relevant.
Having said all this, I suspect that the generalization of women preferring balance and eschewing obsession has a sufficient number of exceptions as to make this point of little worry. However, I may just be biased in thinking this by once having a girlfriend break up with me because having a boyfriend was too distracting from her math work. Still, as unpleasant as it is, it was something of an encouraging sign as far as woman's plight goes.
Sexist jokes are the number one way to drive women out of any group...
It's somewhat odd that this is the case, but it's nothing specific to women. Being in a group where some part of your identity is the but of jokes is about the fastest way to be driven out of the group. (Outright hostility is faster, though.)
...and they are more common than many people realize. I have more than once heard a man say that he doesn't make that kind of joke, and then hours or minutes later, hear the same person make a joke about pregnant women or PMS.
While it is certainly unwise to make such jokes around women, at least until you're very certain of their feeling about such jokes, and even then it's probably safer to avoid them, the problem is that these jokes derive (though sometimes very loosely) from reality, not from any prejudice or hatred of women. Some pregnant women, and some women in some parts of their menstrual cycle, become very flooded with hormones and as a result their behavior becomes very unpredictable verging on irrational. It doesn't happen to all women; I doubt that it happens even to a majority of women. However, these jokes aren't inherently sexist. They are in danger of becoming so if they indulge in over-generalization, but they are jokes about something which is quite real.
This is related to jokes about men "thinking with their other head". Such jokes are offensive when told by women, but when they are sexist it is only the ones which over-generalize. It is true that males have a very strong sexual drive, and that many men let it control their decisions.
In general, jokes which generalize the behavior of some to all rarely benefit from the generalization and suffer from being both inaccurate and unkind. However, when jokes are limited to the unfortunate behavior of the group which actually exhibits it, it would be stupid to tell such jokes to people who might perceive an unintended generalization (e.g. only an idiot tells PMS jokes to women that he doesn't know well), but they are not inherently bad.
The author's point remains that telling the subset of sexually-related jokes which do not generalize is still counter-productive. Telling the sort which do generalize is just dumb, regardless of the audience.
Sometime he just doesn't realize that he made a sexist joke, for example, "blonde jokes" are actually "dumb women" jokes.
This is true, but I'm not sure that it's true in the sense that the author means it. If by "dumb women" jokes, that means "jokes about women who are dumb", this is true. However, if it means, "jokes that [all] women are dumb", it is false.
I am rather inclined to wonder if the socialization of women doesn't include some inculcation of the dislike of abstraction. Whatever the cause, men are very inclined towards abstraction. It is true that some stupid men can't tell the difference between abstraction and reality, but this is rare. I think that the case of pornography is a bit clearer.
There is, apparently, an assumption common among women that when men look at porn, it is to see what they want to do. This is of course the case with some men (see the above point about men who can't tell fantasy from reality), but it is not the norm. The purpose of pornography is to excite sexually. For most men, there are more reasons to have sex with a woman, or at least with a woman that one loves (let's leave prostitutes out of this for simplicity). It's not that one is afraid to ask if the woman would be willing to do what is in the porn, or anything like that, but that porn and women have different purposes. Put simply, you do different things with porn and with a woman because the one is not the other.
Sexual excitement is a very instinctual thing, and though very psychological it is almost more subconscious than conscious. The women in pictures are not looked at as women, but looked at for the sights which arouse. When looking at women in porn, men really do see them as a collection of body parts -- he lets the animalistic part of him take over.
This has almost nothing to do with how a man treats a woman that he loves (I am, of course, restricting here to that set of men who are capable of loving a woman). When a man loves a woman, he has sex with her, he doesn't masturbate with her. If you prefer the terminology of "makes love to her", this is even clearer. Sex is a bit like a hug taken to rather great extremes. If a hug is in some sense the desire to make souls touch as if by physical strength, sex is a much more intimate extension of that -- almost an attempt to make the two one flesh by pushing the most intimate parts of them together hard enough.
In a vastly smaller degree, but similar way, blond jokes are an abstraction. If you ask a man if he believes that all blonde women are stupid, and you can get a real answer out of him, you'll hear that he doesn't. The "Blonde" is mostly a Hollywood construct, though it has literary influences, and it's really to this construct that blondes refer. It has nothing to do with any real women, and no sane man would ever dream of thinking that it did.
This does not lessen the practical point that telling blonde jokes around women is remarkably dumb (again, due to the danger of a perceived generalization). It is, moreover, no defense to say that women should know this. First, even if she knows this in general, an intimidating situation is not likely to make her assume that the generality holds with the specific males that she's considering dealing with. Second, why should she know this? It's not like men ever explain this to women. Third, asking a complete stranger to act as if they know you well and to take liberties with them is severely rude. Who, of any gender, wants to deal with people who treat them rudely? Visitors should always be shown as much courtesy as you can muster, not as little.
The next time you see someone joking about women on your local mailing list or in person, complain about it. It's difficult to do this without making yourself a target for ridicule, but it's even more difficult for a woman to do the same thing. Women keep silent when we see sexist jokes because if we protest, we will immediately be attacked for being over-sensitive, uptight, or a "feminazi."
I cannot speak to the specifics, but there is a larger problem operating here, which is that making jokes that might offend someone is rude. However, it is also rude to point out that someone else is being rude. Thus, to follow this recommendation, one has to overcome one's normal sense of politeness, regardless of your gender. I do not dispute that in situations like this that is the correct thing to do, I merely want to clarify why it is difficult to do.
Note: NEVER use the term "feminazi." It discredits all feminists...
First and foremost, never use this, or any potentially inflammatory language, unless you're well aware that everyone listening doesn't consider it to be inflammatory. Such certainty will virtually never be the possible in public gatherings.
That being said, "feminazi" does not discredit all feminists. It discredits some, but it is a selective term. I've never met a person in a LUG who was of the opinion that women shouldn't be able to vote or hold jobs, and I don't think that it's reasonable to assume that people (in general) mean the term as applying to all feminists.
and trivializes the victims of the Nazi Holocaust.
This depends on exactly how it is used, but this is typically going to be the case.
However, bear in mind that there are feminists who think that all men hate all women and secretly desire to cause women pain and torture them in dark dungeons o on public pillories. They think that all men are dangerous and if they had the power of the Nazis would probably behave a little bit like them. There are almost none of these feminists, and there never were, but they do exist. There are women who seem to want to castrate all men and outlaw sex between the sexes. They are exceedingly rare, but come up with whatever terminology that you want for such people, it will not be gentle if it is accurate.
Again, let me emphasize that only an idiot uses terminology that might be taken the wrong way around people that he doesn't know well. I doubt that the conditions under which such a discussion might arise between people not well acquainted with each other actually exist. If a person in a LUG finds themselves in need of a synonym for feminazi (as I have just described the term), it's a good sign that something has gone rather wrong. If someone suggests that Linux comes from Linus Torvald's name, and that since he's male the name Linux is inherently sexist and discriminatory, just kick him out. He's not going to be a productive member of the group whether he's serious or joking. As a general rule, anyone who won't leave sex out of a discussion of computers shouldn't be in the discussion, regardless of the terminology that he uses.
The best way to fight back against sexist jokes is with humor. If someone replies to a post about the technical achievements of a woman with "Is she single?" reply with, "Gee, Jeff, no wonder YOU'RE still single."
I would probably go for something more like, "Don't get your hopes up Jeff, she probably has standards." It would pave the way for her to respond, not to the original, but to the reply, with something like, "Yeah, I do." so that the topic can be officially closed, and as a benefit, with a joke (thus not causing animosity either by being ignored or directly insulted). Continuing a joke is usually less hurtful than starting one. If you don't plan to kick out the bad apples, you're better off trying to keep them from resenting anyone.
However, the above is largely personal style, and there are infinite variations on how one could respond with humor but without insult. The above just struck my own taste less like humor and more like a direct insult with a thin veil of humor on it.
Every time a woman sees a sexist joke or comment, she feels angry, left out, and belittled. Every time a woman sees a man stand up against this behavior, she feels included and valued.
I don't mean to belittle this important point with a joke, but I just can't help thinking that someone might conclude that the best approach, then, is for the group to defend its female members from sexist comments that no one made. This way you get the benefit of value and inclusion without the sting of any actual sexist comments. Somehow, I don't think that it will work, though...
You may think you're doing a friend a favor by fixing her Apache configuration while she's gone, but if she's trying to learn how to configure Apache, then you're not actually helping her.
The thing, though, is that if she isn't trying to learn how to configure Apache, then you are helping her. Not everyone is trying to learn everything all at once, and many people will get turned off if they are forced to because people won't do things for them. Never grab the keyboard (and sometimes it gets really tempting, not because of a desire to do things for people, but because articulating what to do is sometimes much harder than just doing it), but on the other hand it can be a good idea to offer it if you think that a person might be getting frustrated to the point where he'll give up.
While it is much harder for you to take the time and patience to explain what to do and why, and then spell out the command to type, it's worth it in the long run because the other person is learning and you're less likely to ever have to answer that question again.
From my own recollection, one learns the most when no one helps you and you go looking through man pages and source code to find out the answer. Of course, one typically needs help to get to the stage where this is a workable approach, but once a person is at it, they will generally learn best when you don't give them the answers, spelled slowly or quickly. This is not limited to computers.
Specifically, women will feel more confident in their own abilities if you allow them to type the command themselves.
I'm sorry for speaking from a male-socialized bias, but this is just bizarre. Even a monkey can type accurately. Having a woman type commands herself seems to imply no more trust in their abilities than the level of trust one has in a well-trained monkey. I have no idea how this can be a confidence-building exercise unless something is dreadfully wrong with female socialization.
That being said, the goal of all manuals is to teach you how to get results, so if this is the case, it is the case. Point duly noted, but not at all understood.
"Not only am I in a meat market, I'm the chopped liver."
This is a really great line.
Don't, however, think of mentoring as a way to find a girlfriend
I don't think that this point was emphasized enough. If you become a mentor to someone, that is a very trusting but unequal relationship. An unequal relationship is no place to start an equal relationship. I think that if the mentorship eventually dissolves because the student has become equal to the master, at such a time an equal (romantic) relationship could develop. However, mentoring someone is very paternalistic and it's likely that someone in that situation is likely to experience something like the natural revulsion to incest if the idea of a romantic relationship is brought up.
As much as you can, act like the women in your group are just normal people, because we are just normal people.
No, you're not. You're Linux geeks. Hence the correct course of action is to treat you like linux geeks. If you're not, why would you ever attend a linux user's group meeting? It's not a venue of general interest. :-)
(Note: the above is meant to emphasize the point about treating women normally. If a woman comes to a LUG meeting (and doesn't immediately explain that she's just there with her boyfriend and has no interesting in Linux -- boy is that disappointing when the LUG that you've just started is getting going and seeing more than one female you started hoping that the gender-segregation hurdle might not be so hard after all...), anyhow, if a woman comes to a LUG meeting, it's a safe bet that you have an interest in common: Linux. You don't need to search around for topics of conversation, just treat her like any other linux geek that you've just met.
Women are socialized to be far more sensitive to criticism than men, as well as more critical of themselves. As a result, women are far more likely to be driven off by heavy or unfair criticism than men.
What I've also discovered is a big problem is that women are much more likely than men to think that people are being critical when they aren't. I still don't know of any good ways to keep women from thinking that you're criticizing them when you aren't. This may be some sort of unconscious body language. Men are naturally more combative in their relationships than women are, I believe, and there may even be something special in the way women are taught to deal with men (perhaps women are socialized to assume that men are criticizing them or something like that). This is another point where elaboration would be quite helpful.
It's surprisingly easy to find technically brilliant female computer scientists willing to come speak to your group.
I realize that it would be difficult (or at least require work) to maintain, but some sort of information on how to do it would be quite helpful. If it is easy, it is certainly not obvious.
About the worst LUG meeting possible: ...we're serving pizza (choices: meat, double meat, and extra spicy meat).
I agree: food that hurts when you eat it is a bad idea. That last one should be triple meat. Oh, wait...
That's it for my comments on the HOWTO. I would love to see some of the points that I mentioned elaborated on, but I think that it's a good document that should get wider play than it does. I didn't even know that it existed until Beth pointed it out to me.