[UbuntuWomen] GSoC outreach

[Arc Riley]

I'm sorry that this email may be a bit off-topic, but I think the issue is
important to subscribers of this list.

At PyCon last week we had a number of discussions about how to increase
diversity in the Python community, specifically increasing the number of
women involved.  Several leaders of the Python community expressed concern
over the gender gap in our community and a desire to do what we can to close
it.

As GSoC org admin for the Python Software Foundation many of my questions
were specific to why we have not been receiving more applications from women
for Summer of Code.  One of the themes which kept coming up is a perceived
sense of "ineligibility", several women saying that they felt that they
couldn't compete against "boys who've been programming since they were 13"
even though after speaking with many of them for just a few minutes it was
clear that they were more experienced than many of our past students.

Our current plan is asking projects under the PSF umbrella [1] to clarify
our communication on the level of experience we're looking for and valuing
attitude over experience, making my own project a role model for this [2] in
hopes of inspiring them, and to get links to these pages out to college
professors in related fields such that women who've never heard of GSoC can
take advantage of this program.

What we lack are the contacts.  I'm wondering if anyone on this list knows
good mailing lists or points of contact on campuses who we may be able to
work with, or any other ideas on how we may be able to encourage more women
to apply for GSoC?

Thanks in advance

1: http://wiki.python.org/moin/SummerOfCode/2011

2: http://www.pysoy.org/wiki/SummerOfCode/Diversity
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