Re: Women in Perl [was Re: Updating http://history.perl.org/PerlTimeline.html ]

On Thu, 1 May 2008, Andy Lester wrote:

>> Imagine if every time you logged on to IRC someone got all excited and said 
>> "There's a Jew on #perl". Would that make you feel comfortable? Would you 
>> want to come back? Would it make you feel included in the group?
>
> This analogy is beautiful.  It also points my annoyance with the entire 
> topic.  We never talk about "Jews in Perl" or "Jews in open source".
>
> "How can we make Perl more inviting to Jews?"

This would be a reasonable question if for some reason there was a 
noticeable disparity between Jews in Perl vs Jews in programming or Jews 
in open source. This disparity does exist with women and open source, I 
think.

The answer to the question is simple, at a certain level. Simply put, we 
need to make sure that the Perl community is a comfortable place for women 
(and Jews and everyone else).

Part of that means not making a big deal of their presence. However, 
overall, I think it's less about doing specific things to cater to women, 
and doing more to simply be less repellent (to everyone). That's asking a 
lot of #perl, of course.

Outside of #perl, I think the Perl community as a whole does a decent job 
of being less repellent, and has been doing a good job for the past few 
years. There are some exceptions, but overall I think things have improved 
in the time I've been involved in Perl (9 years or so).


-dave

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