[smc-discuss] Rails Girls Summer of Code

[Razee Marikar]

Praveen, 

I think it will be a good idea to have a proper survey on this. Not a quick survey, but a well thought of survey with people responding properly to it. It will give a lot of good insights to why there aren't more women in the computing industry. I know a few cases where marriage/husband have become the reason for women not to be able to pursue their computing careers. And this is not limited to free(dom) software development. I know for certain that there are companies that relax the entry and interview criterion for women (unofficially) and yet have fewer women in engineering posts. While I believe there is some truth to women not preferring software jobs, I think there is something else in a country like India which is very different from the US and Europe. Also it is a truth that many a times, especially in an open environment like what we have in free software development, women feel unwelcome due to the group of guys having a lot of guy talk along
 with the programming. 

According to a Forbes article, women are simply not interested in STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) careers. But we know by now that its simply not true in India. There are more women than men in most engineering colleges (at least when I was in college, for Computer and IT courses). Having a survey could be a first step in finding out why this is so. In my opinion, there haven't been any proper unbiased studies in India. Doing one might be a good idea. I would like to help any way I can if you were talking seriously about the survey. Although I'm not free for till end of June (and probably even after that), I would like to do whatever I can. 

Regards,
-- 
Razee Marikar

Home page: http://razee.marikar.co.in
“Even a fool knows we can't reach the stars, but thatdoesn't stop the wise man from trying”


________________________________
 From: Praveen A <pravi.a at gmail.com>
To: Discussion list of Swathanthra Malayalam Computing <discuss at lists.smc.org.in> 
Cc: allforabacus at googlegroups.com; mes-fsug at googlegroups.com 
Sent: Friday, 31 May 2013, 18:34
Subject: Re: [smc-discuss] Rails Girls Summer of Code
 


Why do you think programming is a male oriented area when most of the computer science courses have more girls than boys? Also don't you see good number of women in IT companies? Doesn't that mean some thing is missing from Free Software communities that women don't feel welcome? How did you come to the conclusion that there is no descrimination when the numbers speak otherwise? Checkout the commits to smc or silpa repos and tell me how many women are committing? Did you ever ask any women why they don't contribute before declaring there is no descrimination? It is a serious thing when you don't feel anything when a huge portion of the programmers are kept out from Free Software and when efforts are made to reach out to them, you see it as a problem. Let's start a survey if you are interested from your campus itself. Start with counting the number of boys and girls in your class. Then ask how many of them have a computer at home or have a laptop, then
 how many of them have a good internet/broadband connection. Let's analyse the numbers and come to some conclusions. It is a serious issue, are you ready?
On May 31, 2013 6:17 PM, "aboobacker sidheeque mk" <aboobackervyd at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>I don't know the exact reason, But usually programming is considerd as
>male dominated field , Because they are not interested in programming
>(not a generalization, even the first programmer was a female)
>
>Even then both girls and boys have equal opportunity in opensource,
>there is no gender descrimination in it .
>
>So why a female only coding challeng?
>
>Don't take it seriously, I asked it just because ' we(boys) can't participate '
>
>On 5/31/13, Praveen A <pravi.a at gmail.com> wrote:
> Do you see gender descrimination when there are ...
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