[tpm] Perl and inclusiveness

Stuart Watt stuart at morungos.com
Fri Jul 27 07:49:40 PDT 2012


Based on yesterday's discussion, here is a useful perspective, Skud's OSCON keynote from 2009 - http://infotrope.net/2009/07/25/standing-out-in-the-crowd-my-oscon-keynote/

I especially like the quote: "So, what can we learn from this? Well, one thing I’ve learnt is that if anyone says, “Women just aren’t interested in technology” or “Women aren’t interested in open source,” it’s just not true. Women are interested, willing, able, and competent. They’re just not contributing to existing, dare I say “mainstream”, open source projects."

The comments are important too. 

So maybe we do have a problem. Maybe we do need to find ways to change our culture. I've seen truly appalling behaviour on some mailing lists (not all) -- not explicit sexism in many cases, but certainly a somewhat brutish attitude that makes interaction unpleasant. It feels like territorial behaviour in animals, actually. It makes *me* feel uncomfortable, so it's not exactly welcoming. I've also been to blame for not calling people out for acting like that. 

Anyway, there are some good suggestions and things to think about. 

All the best
Stuart

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/toronto-pm/attachments/20120727/9d3abed0/attachment.html>


More information about the toronto-pm mailing list