Gender Poll - 2009

[Bemk]

Oh, and one positive thing I also noticed: in open-source communities, women, though they may be few, are respected and treated as eqy\ual by guys ; which I really believe is a step forward

I guess Open-source communities aren't only open in source, but also in the form of acceptance in the community. People at my school are surprised at how I treat women. In the past I was called a girl, because I treated women/girls at an equal level as boys.

I hate to judge people by their gender, I judge people on how they behave towards my friends and me. That has resulted in being bullied in the past, but now the people in my environment are a bit older (about 16) that is coming to a grinding halt.

Why don't people just accept people who look at ones personality instead of their behaviour? Don't ask me, because I don't know.

[Hal343]

Of course women in linux and open source are treated equally. Many of them are very talented programmers and system administrators. We have to respect anyone who is interested in this culture because they have obviously thought seriously about issues of privacy and openess.

[mariane_08]

Oh, and one positive thing I also noticed: in open-source communities, women, though they may be few, are respected and treated as eqy\ual by guys ; which I really believe is a step forward

Yes I've noticed that as well. Of all the question (silly sometimes) I've been treated with respect and helped. Of course the same questions could equally be asked by a guy too. I do think there is a commonallity in open source communities between not only gender equality but greater of acceptance of difference in general.

On the subject of sexism I remember a while back when I was working part time at a hotel. I would often be on reception in the PM. One time a very sexist aging git came in and the reservation system was experiencing difficulties. I knew how to work around that for check-in and wa strying to do so. But he completely dissed me my competance as a woman to handle such technical matters and said something along the lines that I needed a guy to sort the problem. I was about to call him on it when the supervisor walked in. I had never perceived my boss as being particularly sexist up to that point and would have hoped he would have come to my defense. But nooo when push came to shove he was more than happy to not to offend customer whi had insulted his employee.

[Jollie_kitten]

Thanks all for your very nice replies; indeed-sociologically it makes sense; open source users are not exactly the kind of people who would just scream with the crowd and addopt society's prejudgees. (Also, I guess, statistically speaking we're a bit smarter than the average population :P and that explains also non-sexism )
Mariane, sorry to hear about your supervisor; it's really lame when business goes before principles

[Bemk]

Don't shout that too loud, for I know there are some prejudges form the OS side to the closed source communities, and within the OS community there are prejudges from Linux to BSD and vice versa.

However, most of us don't really care about prejudges and see straight through it once they need the info from the other side. Just look at the Win7 thread. I really have seen some good comments on Windows 7.

[Jollie_kitten]

Here I guess you're right ; I admit having *issues* bout M$ myself -I mean, really- I go around saying "You know, I boycott Microsoft fr ethical reason\s and you should do the same"- so maybe I am over-reacting. :P

[teenytinylinuxgrl]

In the modern west the only difference between male and female is that there are differences in the body, but both male and female can do a certain job as well as the other gender. There are some areas where females have yet to be emancipated and I hope they will do so soon ... is it something in the double X chromosome or is it just that females aren't emancipated enough on certain areas?

The best dancer at my studio is a boy, and he gets "accused" of being gay because he takes dance classes. But he told us once that he wants to keep up the myth that boys don't dance so he can have all us girls to himself, lol!

I hope that is changing though, because there are a lot more boy dancers, on TV and movies at least, lately. Boys need to be liberated just as much as girls do. So I would guess that it isn't as much in the chromosomes as in the culture.

Amy

[D-cat]

That reminds me of high school... I was literally the only boy to take aerobics while all the others went to weight lifting. Some of them went to accuse me of being gay, I replied with "Are you nuts? I'm surrounded by all the cutest girls in the school!" I didn't get any more trouble from them.

[Jollie_kitten]

True... true...
I mean, really- if a woman is an air-plane pilot, that's cool. If a man is a nurse, that makes people giggle. If a woman wears manly clothes- she's HOT. If a man wears feminine clothing- he's a freak. NOT FAIR...

There's a sociological explanation to this; in the Middle Ages -and I think, ion a way, up until the XIXth century, men were actually considered to be superior to women; later on, the only one to challenge strict gender roles were feminists: interested in proving that a woman can do what a man can do; but not too much in "a man can do what a woman can do"; men weren' t interested in doing what women do either- since for centuries they thought they have the privileged position; so the result is that nowadays women have a lot more freedom than men in choosing social roles.

[teenytinylinuxgrl]

...If a woman wears manly clothes- she's HOT. If a man wears feminine clothing- he's a freak. NOT FAIR...

Personally I would love to see a cute boy in short shorts and a short-cropped, midriff-baring tank top, lol. It's funny how in school boys fashion is becoming bigger and baggier while girls fashion is tinier and tighter. That's not fair either!

... men weren' t interested in doing what women do either- since for centuries they thought they have the privileged position; so the result is that nowadays women have a lot more freedom than men in choosing social roles.

I don't know if today's men still feel privileged or not, but I feel privileged as a woman who will be free to either work (someday) or be a "house wife" (someday - and what an awful word. She's not married to the house). If a woman works, she's to be congratulated. If a man stays home with the kids so his wife can work, he's a "wimp" or a "failure" or "gay." THAT's not fair. We women have choices and can make them without social stigma. Men have fewer choices, and many of them still carry silly, illegitimate stigmas. I hope that will change soon.

Amy