Why are there so few women in Linux? (2002) | Hacker News Reader

Why are there so few women in Linux? (2002)

tldp.org

13 pointsorkohunter14 comments

Interesting to note is a very good FLOSS Weekly interview with BSDGirl (is that her handle?) had an interesting project announcement discussion to prevent harassment, called OAPI, with an institute she wants to create to keep it non-corporate.

http://twit.tv/show/floss-weekly/331

I bring this up because the last time she came up on HN, I read her interview about the Linux vs BSD community treatment of her, specifically an insecure partner. Anecdotal or not, the fact she is driven to do stuff like the current project, even if it is in reaction to Gamer Gate and not Linux in particular, says a lot about society I wish I had not heard of.

Anyway, downvote away! Thought some would appreciate this in the context of this post.

I think that if you google her handle or realname you will find plenty of evidence to suggest that she is not a sane human being, or a stable one, (or at least that some people believe this) and this may have something to do with some groups being mean to her. I think that her problem is far less rooted in misogyny than the fact that behavior has consequences on the internet just like in real life.

If sanity is a measure of credibility on the net, I should blow off all the great programmers, tinkerers, and thinkers who have invaded my mind and inspired me with a healthy doese of cynicism and curiosity.

So in short, I do not give a fuck.

I appreciate being inspired to think of things I normally wouldn't and other novelties in kind, and don't consider such eccentricity to be insane. This noncompliance is beneficial to our world. Most of these people, in my experience, will not become unreasonably aggressive if you simply disagree with them, as you didn't when you expressed your disagreement with me. You didn't attack me personally, try to identify me, blame me for anything, unduly accuse me of discrimination, nor try to affect my personal life to some detriment. Therefore, I believe that you have some degree of sanity and stability in the sense that I used those words above.

Most people with a mental illness, even if we restrict that to the severe and enduring end of mental illness, will not become aggressive when you disagree with them.

Stop stigmatising people with a metal illness while attacking the character of this woman.

Linking to some god-awful thread in kotaku-in-action would have been more honest.

The handle's freebsdgirl, and you can find her on Twitter here. https://twitter.com/freebsdgirl

This article seems sort of dated, but I don't know that for a fact because it has no publication date*. It is titled "HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux", but it reads more like a set of grievances in list format.

This article conflates Linux usage with the whole comp sci community. To show correspondence to the low adoption rate of Linux by women with rather mundane societal observations and offer no solutions makes this a bleak article. Perhaps the Linux community at the time this article was written had this problem, but I don't know that it generalizes to every community now.

edit: When I made my comment, there was no date in the title.

> If you are unwilling to accept that women's lack of interest in computing is genetically predetermined (and I hope you aren't willing to accept it), you need to start exploring what environmental causes are involved.

I am not willing to accept that women's lack of interest in computing is genetically predetermined (because it lacks evidence). But I'm also not willing to accept your assumption that it isn't genetically predetermined (for the same reason).

This statement leads into the next statement:

> A more explicit version of this theory is that "Women aren't as smart as men," or any of the usual corollaries--women aren't as good at some skill as men are, usually mathematics, spatial reasoning, or logic.

"Women aren't as smart as men," is NOT a more explicit way of saying "Women are genetically predetermined to be less interested in computing on average." Those are drastically different statements with different meanings. Interest and capability are entirely different qualities of a person.

Part of the problem with the public discussion on this topic is that someone like me, who has a nuanced opinion and thinks that maybe there might be a genetic aspect to career preference, is equated with someone who thinks women are less intelligent with men. This isn't a polar issue: we should be investigating all possibilities. But when you equate my scientifically valid ideas with bigoted, easily disproven ideas, you're polarizing the field, making it so I can't be your ally even if I wanted to.

I'd love to work with people on figuring out why there are so few women in computing, but I refuse to work with people who start with a bunch of assumptions and then vilify anyone who disagrees with those assumptions. To be clear: not all feminists are doing this, but this article certainly is.

As a note, this was last updated in 2002.

And there are very few citations for certain points.

Aside from 2.9, all of these reasons double as explanations for the lack of women in CS.

The real reason is that the help command is 'man', you sexist nerds!

Women seem to happily use android. So, technically, they are on linux. In the article, they probably mean: a linux desktop distribution, such as for example ubuntu. I am not so sure that there would be just a few women using ubuntu. Furthermore, approximately everybody hosts their web sites and internet applications on linux. There is almost no windows hosting going on. I know for a fact that there are lots of women who have web sites, web shops or other internet applications.

Quite sure the OP is talking about developing on Linux.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com