[fedora-india] [Ambassadors] Fedora-Women Plans

[A. Mani]

On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 1:03 AM, María Leandro <tatica at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>
> To be honest, I don't have a huge believe into "woman groups" since that
> starts setting the line in the first place. It's true that a safe
> environment would be the best, however; is sounds a bit odd to say "hey, I
> want equality for everyone... but you must treat me well because I'ma girl".

It will definitely sound odd to strongly motivated and independent
women from urban cosmopolitan milieus and that includes me.

We need to look at the larger picture ... not ourselves.

>
> My experience might be a bit particular and even if we all know that there
> are fewer girls into IT, is not only because the environment, is because
> there are few, period. Just to place the example.
>
> If you go to an IT class at any college/university; you might see that
> classroom is about 70% male and 30% female (depending on the specialty the
> number might vary); so, why do we want more female participation if it's
> obvious that numbers have never been equal?
>

Why did it become like that in the first place?
If you are interested in developing human resources, then you need to
look at sociological models ...
not the ones big corporates use.
We are also not targeting only IT people.
People from any kind of background have the potential to do well in free s/w.

> We can consider that the part that nobody likes to accept. Now; it's also
> true that environment (not everywhere but mostly) is not female-friendly
> just because that, from this small percent; some girls only come to feel
> desired and like goddess. The even smaller part that DO want to bring some
> change finds themselves hiding behind neutral nicknames, fighting the ocean
> of comments or just gets tired and helps other ways. Truth is that, if we
> want equality, we must fight to get it and even if the woman groups are an
> awesome place to share experiences and motivate participation, but that's
> it.
>
> I guess a lot of people expect that support groups do something for them and
> forget that change is in our bare hands. What we can do with a women group
> at Fedora, I srsly don't know; but if each group that feels despised (aka;
> religion, ethnics, etc etc) starts creating a support group, then there will
> be 100 small groups not focusing into the large group that can actually make
> the change.

Affected people know nothing about support groups, their potential or
possible solutions.
They lead half-dead lives in darkness.
It is due to systematic brainwashing.
Even relatively more educated women do not manage to escape in India.
For example you will find women with post graduate qualifications
wasting enormous amounts of their time in hell holes as house-wives.

We follow a community-based developmental model and for us the more
number of contributors and developers we have the merrier it will be.
If you do not know how people of a particular part of a community are
going to contribute, then how can you expect those people to
contribute?

The world is not so rosy.

It also makes sense to work together with other kinds of support groups.

Groups with focus are better suited for development. The quality of a
distro will improve immensely because of that.
It is a fact that Fedora lacks many packages because of lack of focus
for various communities (Even I need to compile a large number of
packages from source).

Corporate developmental models will end up making Fedora a nursery for
corporate robot development
and so we should care.


Best

A. Mani



--
A. Mani
CU, ASL, AMS, CLC, CMS
http://www.logicamani.in