The Free Software Magazine has published an article about Ten easy ways to attract women to your Free Software project.
Judging from the suggestions, it is absolutely unclear if the article is for real or just a prank. Some arguments are perfectly valid, such as ”Informal apprenticeship with men may be awkward“. One can observe the effect at geek events already; women are usually asked which man they ”belong to“, apparently people find it hard to believe that the woman might attend the event out of interest. This goes so far that women even introduce themselves as ”the girlfriend of …“
Other arguments just appear to be plainly insulting (such as women having less time due to childcare, an argument which appears to regard women as ”birth giving machines“. Following this argument, women would not be present in any job) or simply bullshit (such as avatars in web fora giving people a ”face“ – a lot of women actually appreciate the anonymity of the web because it protects them from seduction-seeking men).
Some people even go so far to say that only women can really judge the problems. While they certainly cannot be excluded from the process, we cannot really expect the tiny minority of our community which they constitute to solve our problem for us. It is a bad excuse of men to keep out of the issue.
I have, myself, already invested a large amount of time into the matter over time, since I am also seeing the low percentage of women in the IT as a big problem. I see a lot of these points as well, but I am seeing a variety of problems here ranging from unfair treatment over stupid male procedures to simple education issues on both sides. My opinion on it all can, however, be summarized in two short sentences: