First: While I think programs like "send-a-newbie" are great and undergraduates can use sponsoring, that's good for both female and male students. I'm not sure if special sponsoring for female students would be a great help. More important is what females think about the community. We cannot change that with money, but by showing that even if a bad joke was made, it's possible to say "ok, sorry". instead, what always happens, is that the ones who complain are discredited.
The last time pemungkah complained he said something like "if I was female I would find that offensive". And he was heavily critized for doing that. Now he said that he himself felt offended, and still he's critized, and everybody else who complains, too.
If every women who does stand up by writing a complaint is called a feminazi, that's actually even more a reason to discuss.
Second: telling me that it is easy to discuss things here is really not fair. And if you actually do something without discussing it before with the community, I'm sure you get critized for not having discussed. *sigh*
I'm already doing a lot for the community (developing the software and administrating the server for the german perl forum, moderating it, organizing the german perl workshop, being adminstrator of the Berlin.pm list, and believe me, I have to deal with all kinds of nasty persons for that. (Except the workshop, no nasty persons there. We added an anti-harassment policy to our CfP and sent it to local usergroups and universities. That's doing something.)
Guys threaten me with a laywer, guys are making harassment emails and phone calls to my female co-moderator, we are regularly accused to use our power (because we two, the most active moderators, are female) to spread feminazism.
The interesting thing is, the more active my role in the community got, the more nasty people turned up. While I learned to ignore those more and more, it's really not fair to tell me it's easy to write posts in a forum. | [reply] [Watch: Dir/Any] |
| [reply] [Watch: Dir/Any] |
but equating them with some joke survey answer
I never did that.
| [reply] [Watch: Dir/Any] |
Right. So instead of doing something with the small things we can change, we'll instead organize a big conference where we spend days and millions to find out we still can't solve the big things. Or, if we are not so inclined, so that we can stay on the couch moaning about the big issues and have some excuse why we do not stand up and do something.
And if you want to sponsor a female undergrad, go ahead. I'm sure you'll find a few worth sponsoring a few dinners.
Jenda
Enoch was right!
Enjoy the last years of Rome.
| [reply] [Watch: Dir/Any] |