[wos] FLOSS and gender biases

[nicolas malevé]

Being a late-comer to the list, I apologize if this issue has been
brought already to the discussion.
I had a look on the programme
(http://privatkopie.net/WOS/0_concept_06-06-21.pdf) that looks quite
rich already.
I would like to suggest, however, to reinforce the visibility given to
the question of gender discrimination that still rules in the FLOSS
ecosystem.
Maybe as a workshop that would complement the "Future of Free Software
Panel".
I would like to refer to a recent study lead by Bernhard Krieger and
James Lead from Cambridge University, the figures are devastating. In
the IT field, the presence of women is evaluated at 20-35%. In FLOSS,
they fall to 1.25%. In the debian community, for 950 developers only
4(to 8) are women, less than 1%. A problem for a "universal" operating
system...

Bernhard Krieger would probably be interested to discuss this report and
possible "solutions" with the WOS audience.
As I have seen that Fernanda Weiden will attend the panel, maybe this
workshop would be an opportunity for her to further explain her work in
debian-women.

I had the opportunity to meet both of them in Brussels at the occasion
of Digitales Meetings(http://www.ada-online.org/digitales06/?lang=en)
and they are very good in direct interaction with the public.

best,

nicolas