Today I have been reading a bit about a couple of notorious cases of sexism (or should I say alleged sexism, or maybe sexist negationists) in FLOSS conferences recently. One of them involves the once-much-beloved RMS derailing yet again; the other one has to do with an unfortunate metaphor involving outstanding software developers and porn stars.
The low number of women in computing, in particular women actively involved in open source communities, is hardly breaking news. Some praiseworthy efforts have been made by members of the community (male and female) to draw some attention to the spectacular imbalance between men and women. I remember reading about the topic a decade ago, during the first year of my MSc in computing science. I remember reading papers like Ellen Spertus’ 1991 report Why are there so few female computer scientists?.
Today I discovered the document HOWTO encourage women in Linux (Val Henson, 2002) and, together with some conversations in the blogosphere about the two aforementioned cases, it got me thinking again about the issue, whether there is an issue at all, and some proposed solutions to it.
Let me summarise my position: I do think there is an issue. I too lament how few women seem to be actively interested in FLOSS. And I acknowledge that clearly there is a component of male chauvinism to it.
I believe that men and women, in general, are naturally, biologically wired to be sometimes good at different activities; and therefore, they might find, in general, different activities to be the most enjoyable to them. But I suspect (and I don’t claim any scientific rigour in here; this is just a hunch) that if we could magically suppress all constraints and prejudices from society (i.e. if we could empower nature against nurture), we would find more women working on software, and free software, than we have at the moment. Ergo, it must be sexism preventing that additional 2%, 5%, 20% of women from getting into computing.
…which probably does not imply that all the blame is to be put on male members of FLOSS communities. University lecturers discouraging women who pursue technical degrees, parents who disapprove the choice of their daughters, partners who feel threatened if their girl is better with computers than they are, and women themselves — I guess we all have our fair share of responsibility.
That said, I find some well-intentioned attempts at dealing with this issue somewhat naïve and misguided. Let me comment about them here briefly.
People often complain about sexist remarks and behaviour during FLOSS conferences — and very rightly so. Again, Stallman’s “joke” about the “emacs virgins” is a clear example of an offensive comment that the community should denounce. The problem for me is that the “measures” commonly suggested to counter those comments frequently are either exaggerated or aimed at the wrong uses of the language.
Among the solutions, or advice, suggested by the document HOWTO encourage women in Linux, §3.7 is “don’t make sexual advances towards women” and §3.9 is “don’t complain about the lack of women in computing”. Some women have explained that certain comments made to them by male colleagues feel awkward or somewhat threatening, or that those comments make them feel excluded from the group.
So, males at conferences. Forget about flirting. Overlook the obvious low number of females in the room. No references to the imbalance between male and female colleagues in general. Do not mention that the brunette who spoke yesterday is so sexy. Avoid gender as a topic altogether. While all this might help women feel less threatened within groups of mostly male colleagues (and I am not sure about that, for such weird, aseptic atmosphere could make them feel awkward, at best), I see two problems about that strategy.
First of all, it is not feasible. Forgive me for falling into the stereotype, but men think sexually so often. Besides, sex, gender, differences and classifications of all kinds are common topics for bona fide humour and daily social interactions (not only for men, but for adults). With this I am not trying to justify sexist remarks by any means, let alone any kind of sexual harassment. But I wonder if a woman who finds offensive or threatening that a guy states his preference for women from a particular town, as opposed to some other town — if that makes her feel uncomfortable or isolated from the group, her problem might not be with guys in FLOSS communities, but with guys.
I would equate that particular example to an experience that many men know all too well: that of approaching a woman during a formal meeting or social gathering, introducing ourselves to her with the solely intention of discussing a professional matter or having a chat, and instantly noticing the contempt in her (she got it completely wrong and looks at you as if looking at a vulture) acting as if you did not exist, or even leaving without replying to you.
What I am saying is that I don’t think that kind of behaviour has anything to do with special groups of interest or types of jobs. It’s men and women.
The second problem is that even if everyone became hugely aware of the issue and consciously avoided any comment that had the potential to highlight differences between male and female members of the community, such imposed behaviour would alienate members of the community and would serve just to sweep the problem under the carpet. It reminds me of those sad (and fruitless) attempts at legislating the use of natural language from the part of governments and public institutions. According to HOWTO encourage women…, another good thing to do (§3.3) is “don’t call people bitches”. I totally agree with this idea. Except when that person is a bitch, e.g. your boss, in which case the use of the expletive is entirely justified.
Other measures suggested fit in the category of things to do to make the world a better place, and as such I bet anyone would endorse them. But I utterly fail to appreciate how these measures are designed for the benefit of women in particular. Examples of this are §3.4 (“do show some respect”), §3.8 (“do act friendly”), §3.15 (“don’t criticize too much”) and §3.16 (“do compliment”). Am I the only one who finds it patronising (and sexist) to suggest that for women to feel more in their element members of the community should be extra friendly, criticise less and compliment more? Isn’t that implying something mean and unfair about women themselves?
Finally, I think that another group of explanations for sexism within open source (and associated solutions to it) are impractical because they are, to some extent, incompatible with the very nature of FLOSS communities. We already know that open source software works as well as it does, among other things, because developers and contributors of all kinds are generally passionate (even obsessed) about FLOSS. They commit so much of their time and wits to technical stuff that they often have little time for sport, socialising and other activities. That is not wrong nor right, as long as it is every individual him/herself deciding what to do with his/her life. But the fact is that that approach, together with remarkable egos, meritocracy, reputation-based economy, competitiveness, etc. has become part of the identity (and the success) of the community.
Some argue that geeks code so much, that they never stop thinking and talking about tech stuff, that they don’t cultivate other interests, that they are too proud… and that those habits contribute to drive women away. I agree with the first clauses. But I don’t necessarily agree with the last one.
Why would I? There is nothing inherently masculine in being obsessed with work, lacking humility, or being capable of coding for hours in a row.
Or is there?
Here is the subtle contradiction in those arguments. On the one hand, if we assumed that those customs and values are essentially masculine, and therefore that women don’t adapt to those working conditions as well as men do, we would be accepting that women are simply worse at that kind of work. In other words, we would have to agree that women are less suited, in general, for the community-based open source software development paradigm. If that were the case, most of the discussion would be over: nothing is driving women away, nobody is driving women away, sexism is not the cause: they are just worse at it, and they simply don’t like it as much as men do.
Somehow, that doesn’t sound right.
On the other hand, if we rejected the assumption that long working hours, meritocracy, big egos, etc. are, as attributes or skills, more male than female, all those arguments would collapse. In other words: anyone, man or woman, can become obsessed with software development and neglect his/her social life. So where is the discrimination? Women would not be entitled to accuse their FLOSS groups of male chauvinism unless their commitment to FLOSS is as high as their male colleagues’. They are not discriminating you for being a woman — they are discriminating you because you are not as involved as they are. You might not like it. But it doesn’t qualify as sexism.
That doesn’t sound completely right, either.
Along these lines, I have to mention §3.5 (“don’t take the keyboard away”), §3.19 (“don’t micro-specialize”) and §3.20 (“do discuss broader topics”). I see the same problem again: if we introduce varied, broader topics in conferences with the goal in mind of interesting more women, we are implicitly acknowledging that women are naturally less suited for hard-core computing without sweeteners, while at the same time transforming the FLOSS community into something different to what it actually is. (You can lower the baskets in the court to stop discrimination against people who are shorter than 170 cm, and bring everyone into the sport. Only that it will not be basketball any more — it will be something different. And most likely, less fun.)
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