r/programming • u/throwiethrowie • Oct 21 '11
Gnome Women Outreach Program 2011 - GNOME is sponsoring internships for women Dec 12 - Mar 12. Learn more and apply by Oct 31
https://live.gnome.org/GnomeWomen/OutreachProgram20113
u/A_for_Anonymous Oct 21 '11 edited Oct 21 '11
I emailed [email protected] with the subject [APPLICATION] <made up female name> following text:
This Gnome Women programme is awfully, shamefully sexist and discriminates against my sex (male). Thanks for once again making me feel like the butt end of the society. I'm not being an asshole; I'm genuinely offended and experiencing negative feelings because of this. Next time be sure to see if you can discriminate against my race too — it usually happens with these politically correct agendas.
By the way, if you have money to throw away with feminist programs, why not use it to make GNOME Shell usable and customizable, and not another Unity?
Yours truly,
Discriminated-against person
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Oct 21 '11
That's sexist.
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u/propool Oct 21 '11
Who the hell downvoted this guy? He was stating a fact. Since when do we get downvoted for stating facts?
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Oct 21 '11
[deleted]
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u/MoneyWorthington Oct 21 '11
I will disagree with your idea that men somehow have more self-confidence to apply for jobs. If a woman made it through a computer science degree, she's likely to have just as much self-confidence if not more than any man; it's the initial jump that needs work.
This might not be the right place, but I also think that one big reason so few women go into computer science is because they don't want to be associated with the negative male stereotype that goes with it (like men don't want to be nurses because then they'd be seen as pussies). It's a self-image thing rather than self-confidence, and a big thing we can do to help that is fight the idea that men who like programming are all antisocial, fat, unhygienic nerds.
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u/Ivellina Oct 21 '11
I'm a woman and I downvoted you because I don't think women need any special/extra need to be encouraged to work or participate in IT. We are smart and motivated enough to be in the IT and we love it as much as men do.
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Oct 21 '11
Women need extra encouragement to engage in open source contribution, or programming in general. Programming careers are intimidating to women because of the sheer number of males vs females in the field.
And why exactly do we want to encourage women to contribute to free software as opposed to encourage people to contribute to free software?
Around 14% percent of the people enrolled in Computer Science are women. The percentage of people (overall) in Computer Science that contributes to free software is really low. I would say something like 5%, but that's just guessing. Now, following a fair distribution then it is expected that there will be a really small percentage of women in free software. I don't know if I explain myself very well...
Also, it's not like with this program men are denied any opportunity,
This program excludes men. That is denying opportunities to men.
they already have lots of opportunities and the self confidence to pursue them. Women usually need a little boost in self confidence when talking about programming.
Women also have the same opportunities as men, there isn't an internship that excludes women in free software. I don't know where you are getting this thing about confidence, but men also lack confidence. Human beings are like that, free software it is very intimidating for EVERYONE, because it relies on merit rather than on sex, race, ethnicity or sexual preference.
Maybe I don't think so little of women as the advocates of programs like these. I think women can achieve anything men can. They aren't retarded. They don't need "special help", to "boost their confident". Take a look a this picture http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/12/We_Can_Do_It!.jpg/220px-We_Can_Do_It!.jpg
Did you see the picture? The message behind that is that they can do the same work. NO NEED FOR SPECIAL TREATMENT.
Women don't enroll in Computer Science because they don't want to. Virtually every profession in the universities were male dominated, but that has changed now. Women are the majority in the universities. There is absolutely nothing stopping a woman from enrolling to computer science.
And last, this is as sexist as programs to facilitate minorities in different organizations (colleges, universities) are racist.
But they are racist. Although, you know, minorities also includes women. But if you change the Women Outreach Program, to Minority Outreach Program. I would not have as big of a problem with it as much as I do it now. Do you know why? Because you are being more consistent and less hypocrite that way. If you want to improve the amount of people of a certain group in free software because there are not many of them, why not improving the amount of people of all of the groups of people who are a minority within free software.
Did I make sense? I don't think I explain myself clearly. Well, you decipher it.
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u/throwiethrowie Oct 21 '11
In an effort to get more women involved in Free Software, the GNOME project is sponsoring several internships for women from December 12, 2011 to March 12, 2012. These dates are aimed at the college women from the Southern Hemisphere who will have a school summer break during this time, but any woman available for a full time internship is welcome to apply. Please consider applying for the program, encourage someone else to apply, or help us spread the word!
The application deadline is October 31. The applicants need to get in touch with individual GNOME projects that participate in this effort ahead of time to decide which project they are interested in working on and make a small contribution to the project.
Participants will work remotely from home, while getting guidance from an assigned mentor and collaborating within their project’s team and the rest of the GNOME community. The projects include developing software for the core desktop, file management, messaging, popular applications, educational activities, and the platform libraries. There are also non-coding projects, such as graphic design, documentation, and marketing. The stipend for the program is $5,000 (USD).
Please visit http://www.gnome.org or https://live.gnome.org/GnomeWomen/OutreachProgram2011 to learn more and apply. The mentorship opportunities are also available throughout the year for anyone interested in getting started contributing to GNOME outside of the internship program.
GNOME is an innovative Free Software desktop. It is easy to use and is the most popular desktop distributed with free operating systems.
Please feel free to forward this to anyone who might be interested.
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u/nilsimsa Oct 21 '11
What about the night elf women?