[UbuntuWomen] Suggestions for OSS project participants?

[Matt Good]

I just read Mirjam's blog post[1] from Planet Ubuntu which covers some
interesting findings from a study on female involvement in F/LOSS[2] and
have read through most of the study itself.  Some of the figures,
particularly those on age and education level of women involved in OSS
were new to me and I'd highly recommend reading the findings.  However,
I was disappointed that the recommendations were all specific to
government organizations.  While I'm sure these are good ideas, it
doesn't really help me as an individual OSS participant.

I have been active on the Trac project[3] for several years, and it is
where I invest most of my OSS involvement.  Articles such as "HOWTO
Encourage Women in Linux"[4] offer good suggestions for behaviors that
can be applied in online communications (IRC/email) or Real Life, which
I'm sure I could be better at, but I'm also wondering if there are ways
as part of an OSS development team I can be more actively reaching out
to women in the community to encourage their involvement.  Finding where
to draw the line between "Do encourage women in computing" and "Don't
stare and point when women arrive" is not easy.  Would it be helpful for
me to post here and/or on the Trac mailing list looking for women
interested in contributing to Trac?  Any other suggestions for me or
developers on other projects?

-- Matt Good

[1] http://zerlinna.blogweb.de/archives/139-Women-in-linux.html
[2]
http://flosspols.org/deliverables/D16HTML/FLOSSPOLS-D16-Gender_Integrated_Report_of_Findings.htm
[3] http://trac.edgewall.org/
[4] http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/