[UbuntuWomen] An idea on how to get women from the list involved

[Tricia Bowen]

On Feb 7, 2008 5:37 PM, Emma Jane Hogbin <emmajane at xtrinsic.com> wrote:

> I agree that it is a group of men that new members are joining. Perhaps
> it's the difference between the term "join" and "break into." For
> example: I am the only female member in my LUG. My LUG guys are probably
> the sweetest and most wonderful group of guys I've ever dealt with. They
> answer all of my questions but when topics that I know about come up
> they are absolutely gracious in turning the tables and being the
> students. Just as my knitting group is a bunch of women who are all
> married and with either kids or grandkids, the LUG is a bunch of guys.


I'm accustomed to breaking into/joining a group of men face to face. I was
on the Math League is high school. I majored in Math in college and now I'm
back college for a Master's in Math after being a Programmer for 10 years.
There has always been a "prove you have the miticlorians" factor in any of
the male dominated groups I've been in. However, in my Master's level Math
class there are 2 men and 10 women. It's a great feeling to walk into a room
and just be me and not the "Woman" and not have to prove anything to anyone
else only myself.

> Definitely women do need to be motivated by personal curiosity or
> passion first. It is not the men/group's job to explain why women should
> be excited about being a MOTU (or developer or whatever)--but the group
> should be able to articulate the basic procedure required for
> participation. In other words: we can't go around thinking it's
> acceptable to have a secret handshake to be a part of a FOSS community
> (or a specific project); and we can't go around thinking that women
> deserve membership to a group based on gender alone. Even if the
> barriers to entry are high, they should still be clearly defined.


True, I don't think any woman thinks that entrance based solely on gender is
the way FOSS works. There is definitely a knowledge base component that is
necessary.


> I'm pretty sure that many of us will agree that launchpad is...
> "difficult" at best. I've done a tiny little bit of google searching to
> see if there is a description of how to fix a bug. I've found "how to
> report a problem" http://www.ubuntu.com/community/reportproblem but I
> haven't found a page on fixing bugs and uploading patches. Does anyone
> know where this page is?


Is there anyone on the list that has done bug fixes or patches that would be
will to chat on IRC about how they went about doing so? I'm in the UTC -5
timezone.

--Tricia
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-women/attachments/20080208/dda0abea/attachment.html>