Fedora-Women Plans

[A. Mani]

On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 8:58 AM, nitesh narayan lal
<nitesh...@fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> But do you have any specific plans such as conducting events etc for
> making Fedora-women active (its a good idea).
> Then you can certainly share it here, We will try to help you as much
> as possible .


I will see what can be done.

0. I am seeing a lack of direction (apart from inactivity) at
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Women

1. The goal of improving collaboration within Fedora is definitely
sensible, but we need to look beyond.

2. Initiatives within Fedora : A FAS group will be useful.

3. If we need to reach out/ expand free s/w network then apart from
s/w related aspects we need to look at other avenues.

4. Different regions and cultures of oppression exist. We need to
address them differently.

5. A Fedora distribution (or any spin) is not customized for any group
of people: by way of themes, information (that go beyond
documentation). Can we have spins that address
a. rights including things like the s/w in
http://www.huridocs.org/research-development/ and related
customization.
b. lack of basic knowledge among people that lead to social evils.
c. Other kinds of basic knowledge that can empower people. This is
going beyond the education spins.

and free software that provide the same (instead of dumping entire
Wikipedia / links on people).

(that is some work)

6. There are innumerable rights to be fought for and rights are a way
of reaching out to people.

Events will keep happening ... but there should be different kinds of events.



Best

A. Mani


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

[A. Mani]

On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 9:51 PM, Neville A. Cross <nev...@taygon.com> wrote:
> I have been pursuing this issue for a about 4 or 5 years now with little
> success. I have learned a couple of things. First, it is hard to reach
> critical mass. The skills of some women does not match the needs of
> other. The second is that some how what the community need is a safe
> environment free of trolls. Rude people impact hard on beginners, as
> some males come back for a second round, we turn blind to the fact that
> we are dismissing a lot of beginners. They may have some technical
> skills, but are facing the challenge of some unspoken group rules that
> come from old dynamics, that are fading but not eradicated. Trolling
> include some male flirtation, from invading personal space to harassment
> (hope not).

> We started by having a code of conduct that in its first point address
> our aim for this safe environment gender/new-comers aware. We have tried
> to the maximum to foster that in our local fedora group but sadly, it is
> hard to keep trolls out. Some issues raised in our local mailing list by
> our own fedora enthusiast been rude. Some times it is from people part
> of the free software general community attending our events. It is
> difficult but most fedora official members (as in FAS account holders)
> are committed to this.
>
> Nevertheless, in Nicaragua, we have failed before. We are trying the
> idea of promoting a monthly women gathering about free software.
> Initially with males only for invitation, hope that later more open
> door, but always with power of banning people. I am sponsoring the place
> and stepping aside from participating. I have contacted some TIC groups
> with female focus. I hope that if this work, we can later get
> sponsorship from some NGO that we are using now to spread the word about
> this group.


>
> This is a difficult task for Fedora Community, as this is a issue that
> have to be dealt locally, and some times local fedora groups are not big
> and resourceful enough to do some sort of what we are planning in
> Nicaragua. I want my comments give hope and ideas to built a better
> fedora community. I am really needing more insight, so please any advise
> is more that welcome.

Yes, the local aspect is very important.

In India, we have had many college/university level events with women
participation, but very few of the participants actually go up to the
level of contributing or into advocacy.

The issues in India are very different from that of Nicaragua. Here we
have huge economic inequality and deprivation. Sex education is not
part of the education system and only a small percentage of the people
are literate. Our target group in India can only include the lower
middle class and above. The patriarchy in conjunction with evil
religions and caste does not permit most women to think or act freely.
Since it is a systematic brainwashing process, even progressive forces
cannot or do not work against it for various reasons. Discrimination
is the norm. Apart from the Left, none of the political parties have
progressive views and the Left does have electoral compulsions. We
have organizations that work towards "free software for poorer
classes" and taking free s/w to villages like FSMWB, FSMK and FSMI. In
the state of Kerala, they have ~100% literacy and free s/w adoption
has happened to some extent (the present state Govt is not so friendly
towards free s/w ) due to low level work of free s/w communities, but
they still have a very patriarchal scheme of social order.

Basically it is necessary to combine feminism(s) with Fedora.
This is difficult because of Fedora policies/goals.
It is necessary to select better active forms of feminism and work
with related groups.
Otherwise pushing ahead with "community participation" and
"participation of women" without any real thrust on the the basic
issues preventing participation will not work.


Ubuntu on the other hand might venture into evil things like religion:
ubuntu-christian edition etc.
They do not have a feminism(s) or woman edition. So I am specifying it in depth.
A few preliminary posts on that are here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!topic/wfs-india/CDQjeYvCqys

Many of the so-called Indian feminist groups are themselves backward,
stuck in patriarchal scheme of things, hetero-normative perspectives
and other anti-progressive views. So one needs to be cautious about
the type of people to work with.

[A. Mani]

On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 1:03 AM, María Leandro <tat...@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.