Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Fwd: Event: Manchester Girl Geek Dinner #2 - 7:00 PM Friday, July 25, 2008

[Paul Waring]

On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 01:27:02PM +0100, Lucy wrote:
> Just because the exclusion isn't deliberate most of the time, doesn't
> do anything to lessen the exclusion itself.

I wasn't suggesting that it's less of an exclusion, merely that's
there's no intent behind it (well, maybe there is from some people, but
I don't think most geeks I know deliberately work to exclude women -
even if they do things which might unintentionally put women off). In
fact, if we go to the report you mentioned, on p.16 (section 4.1) it
says:

"The exclusion happens among people who often do not mean to appear, and
who do not interpret their own actions, as hostile to women."

Whilst I wouldn't advocate building an entire assumption round one quote
from a report, perhaps this lends a bit of weight to the suggestion that
women are not intentionally excluded from F/LOSS or IT in general.

Also, since people have brought up so many bad examples, I would like to
at least point to one positive one - in my lab/office the gender balance
is exactly 50:50, the most senior research associate is female, the
research lead (her line manager) is male and his line manager is female.
I don't know if we do something particularly special (we do concentrate
on human-centred research, which might appeal to women more than other
aspects of IT), but we've got an almost perfect gender balance whilst
selecting people based on merit.

Paul

-- 
Paul Waring
http://www.pwaring.com