En 2010, ça va marcher !

Courte marche suivie d’une action surprise !
RENDEZ-VOUS à 13H SQUARE PHILLIPS métro McGill, (angle rues Ste-Catherine et Union), Montréal
INVITATION À TOUTES ET TOUS !!!

Réservez d’ores et déjà votre dimanche 7 mars pour une action symbolique à Montréal à l’occasion du lancement national de la troisième année d’actions internationales de la Marche mondiale des femmes.

Une rencontre motivante and impressionante parmi les chercheuses féministes et les groupes des pratiques au Québec a été tenu à l'Université du Québec à Montréal le 28 janvier 2010. Une quarantaine des chercheures et de féministes se sont rassemblées afin de discuter des pistes possibles de collaborations, ainsi que d'échanger de l'information à propos des questions et des actualités de la vie militante et académique.

Un modèle de transfère des connaissances

Une des questions les plus actuelles de cette rencontre représentaient les façons de faire de l'échange entre les milieux. Voici quelques éléments surlignés:

• Encourager le transfère social qui vise la modification des rapports sociaux des sexes
• Augmenter la capacité d'agir des groupes pour éviter de développement des individus qui partent.
• Tenir une pratique réflexive sur les autres
• Organiser des activités diverses et adaptées
• Tenir compte du contexte des utilisateurs et de leurs besoins
• Orienter les efforts de transférer vers la pratique
• Avoir des contacts personnels soutenus

Les mouvements des femmes

Le milieux féministe se distingue par son dinamisme, diversité, vivacité du mouvement des femmes au Québec. C'est un milieu particulier qui encourage le transfère des savoirs et promeuve la démocracie. Il existe beaucoup des contraintes, mais ce qui est important est de toujours garder "un côté réfléxive". Aliances avec les chercheures pour aller plus loin.

Dans le cas du Relais Femmes, les défis sont plusieurs. Par example: d'accompagner les groupes dans leurs expériences, de réflechir comment les nouvelles connaissances sont prises dans le milieu/groupe; de combiner la recherche avec la formation et la mobilisation.

She's Geeky: A Technology Conference for Women will be taking place between 29 and 31 January, 2010 in Mountain View, California (US). Held in the Computer History Museum, She's Geeky promises to be an awsome event.

Among the proposed sessions can be found many interesting ideas: from technical skills, to management and transfer of knowledge, networking and philosophy around women and technology, children and computers, and the future.

Here are my favourites mixes:

• Linux, command-line, GIMP, programming, public speaking
• Ruby programming, Rails, ways to get more women into programming, teaching programming to kids
• Arduino!

Je fait une intervention au cours de Sylvie Jochems, TRS 2150 « Analyse des mouvements sociaux et action collective en travail social ».

I am changing these days. My mind is changing, and my thoughts - with it. I think it is my MA thesis which is changing me. Each day I discover new things around women's contribution to FOSS development, which is sometimes difficult to explain, but is tempting to make it heard by more people. This is why preparing a speech is a birth of a new challenge. It cannot be done months before it is given. And instead of doing my slides in the plane, I kept working on my research. Because the more I advance into the issue, the more what I will talk about will be new. And the more it is new, the more it is passionate. And by presenting it to other people, will make me advance with the research.

Every hacker conference confirms things, and opens up for some new thoughts. My point of view seems rare, since I am into three things at the same time: I do hacktivism, I do feminism, and I do research on these both things. Well, going to hack conferences is the rarest of the conference topics I actually do. More often I get the chance to go to academics ones, where I need to define what is FOSS, what is “women” and what is “contribution”. Then to ones on women rights and feminism (need to introduce information and communication technologies through FOSS). As for me, the hacktivism ones are my favourite ones. These really touch to so many issues I do not get the chance to hear about elsewhere then at the presentations.

My first presentation at FSCONS, taking place tomorrow from 15h15 has this crypted title "NGO Women". It is part of the Serengeti track on social movement examples on Free Software appropriation.

So, in brief, I am going to give several examples on how feminist movements around the world use free software as their approach to software and Internet technology: ways of appropriation, challenges, strategies. Some of the projects took place in Eastern Europe like the Women's Information Technologies Transfer, a network of ICT trainers for the women's movements, which bases its principles on open platform and freedom of technology. Others are taken from France, Canada and other parts of the world.

I will also like to discuss a statement, which I hear more and more often on feminist forums, that "There is nothing more feminist on the Internet than the Free Software". This is in similarity to another, more global view that Free Software movements and solidarity movements, in general, often have a common agenda.

Today someone asked me why I've cut my t-shirt from all sides and why I didn't like it in its original way. Well, have you ever thought why women wear more rarely geeky t-shirts, the ones that are sold at each hack-fest, including the ones I have from Drupal Camp? Well, here is why: because they are often made in they way: one form fits all. Women seem to care more on how the t-shirt will fit her, and maybe it is about our forms - we are all different!

T-shirts are usually in this square form, which is probably good for guys, but does not always look very well on women. Even the female t-shirts (which I also have from events who had a choice between male & female ones) are often too closed on the neck, too long, and with the sleeves falling till the elbow. Not a nice thing to wear, I must admit.

So, what do we do, if we like enough the t-shirt and really want to wear it?
We take the scissors and let the cutting begin! You cut a bit the neck, you remove a little from the bottom, you make the sleeves fit.

But I use this "trick" ever since I did a lot of hitchhiking. Back then, we had our hitchhikers' t-shirts, and we would travel the country with them (we would also paint them sometimes). Now is the same, with the difference that we most often take trains and planes, and that travelling means often jumping from a conference to another.

Ah, and if you think I am the only one doing that, I would say - "no". I have also discovered a number of geeky women who transform some boaring t-shirts in whatever you can think: gloves, hats, headbands or even skirts! You need to read the T-Shirt Surgery. Hack it Up, then Dress it Up. Doctor You, report to the ER, by Lorain Blanken, About.com.

(thanks to linuxchix for remiding me of this great idea some weeks ago. I was piling t-s at home without thinking of modifying them actually).

Off to see Göteborg now. With one of my cut-fit t-s ;-)

The Free Society Conference and the Nordic Summit will be taking place this year in Göteborg, Sweden. I was invited by Serengeti community, who wished to make a link between the Free Software movement and the social communities and groups. So each example on how this relation is possible, will be helpful for their workshop. I will speak about how women's movements around the world appropriate Free Software.

I will be also doing a keynote speech on Free Software and Feminism.

The dates:

• November 14, 15h15 for the Free Software and Women Movements track
• November 15, 9h00 for the keynote speech

I am looking very much forward to this event!

While the Oekonux conference in Manchester (27-29 March 2009), I was interviewed by Dan Lynch, for their podcast Linux Outlaws. I was nicely surprised the other day, when he wrote to me and told me he added the edited version of it in the 90th podcast, dating from May 6, 2009.

I must admit it is not my best performance, it was after a 1,5 hour lecture, so I was quite in a mood to not to care much about the what I am saying. I notice I tend to sometimes not finish my thoughts, but... this is my speciality, when I am told I have a couple of minutes, and I want to say plenty of things. However, it went quite well, and I can see Dan has left almost all of it... about 30-40 min.

So, here is the podcast : in Mp3 and in Ogg.

And, of course there was some fierce discussion on the topic, which I could not really follow because of time restraints, but also because I am fed up of the same sexist trolling, and the same excuses...

Penny Leach wrote recently a blog post about the awards given at Best of Swiss Web.

What annoyed her with this event was the special award given to women in technology (Women Wired in Web). The reaction this initiative produced was that most of the female participants felt bad and did not find it appropriate. Penny provoked a discussion on several lists and on her website (see here) in order to see what other women-in-computing think about the issue.

Before I summarize the discussion and the main conclusions, here are some facts that Penny points out about the event:

1. There was sexism throughout all the event with pretty women giving the awards, and with colouring the Women Wired in Web award in purple, etc. While they were pretending with the women-only-award to be fighting gender inequality in the Computer Science field.
2. The result from the initiative actually put women down, pointing at them and saying they are different, instead of just making place for women into a male world.
3. The female jury got to get up on stage during the presentation of their award, which didn't happen for
   any other jury of any other category.

So, I thought the discussion on this was important, since the issue is very ambiguous: yes, it is a great initiative to give place for women in a male-dominated field. But is it actually the good way of doing things? And if it is not done in the proper way, isn't it producing the opposite feelings, and actually contributing to the problem, and not to the solution? I guess, this is what happened with the Best of Swiss Web.

What are the pros of a women-only space in a CS conference, project or any other type of activity?

• It is actually a raising problem that women are absent from software development industry. This problems add two new problems: 1) women are not well represented in the decision-making about software production, and 2) the software produced does not answer women'e needs.
• For make a change, there need to be active measures, and not silence on the issue. Some groups who recognise the problem, try to work in order to solve it. Companies offer special conditions for women to join teams; others provide scholarships and prioritise women's ideas. The main reason is that if there are 2 women initiated projects out of 100, even if they are great, it might be difficult to make them visible in the pile. So, what is done is to assign quota.
• I tried to define the above as "positive discrimination", but Penny came out with a better idea: affirmative action (Def: A policy or a program that seeks to redress past discrimination through active measures to ensure equal opportunity, as in education and employment.).

BUT....

• The problem I see with this event is that it was promoting a stereotypic underestimation for women in general (with the pretty women giving awards, etc.), while they wanted to show off that they care about "bridging the gap" by organising this women-only award event. In this, they actually mocked the female participants. Therefore, even if they had good intentions, they did more harm than fixed anything.
• Since the question is so delicate, every wrong move contributes to the problem, rather than to the solution. In a polarised male field, to give a tribune to women, creates a lot of food for contempt and hate. The badly presented activity of positive discrimination can easily turn into humiliation. And if you women felt like this at the ceremony, this has obviously not been the best way to do.
• Sarah Currier talks about tokenism on Penny's blog: "The trouble is of course, when any movement reaches the point where tokenistic attempts to solve the problem are made like the one you describe, it becomes difficult to know exactly what to bitch about and how."
• Nicolas Connault says (in the same post): "In my experience, whenever a minority group feels they are being discriminated against, they tend to adopt the victim frame of mind, and interpret people's actions through that frame of mind. It usually makes things worse because, if you play a victim role, you usually stay a victim, even when the initial annoyances have gone".

To summarise the good ideas and suggestions that came out of this really constructive and rich discussion, I would support Penny who thinks the event was organised with good intentions (although road to hell is covered with good intentions!!!), and that it would be probably important to contact the organisers and to let them know how women participants felt. To point them out some of the problems, and to make propositions on how to do next time. In a good tone, and with humour, of course. As someone said: it comes down to treating other people with respect.

In my opinion, it has been indeed good intentions. But maybe they need some help by gender aware people who could propose better ways for involving and encouraging women to the technology field. The efforts are in place, now we need to work on the quality of the contents.

I am about to complete my second chapter of my master's thesis, which covers the context of women's participation in Free and Open Source Software development projects. It is an introduction chapter, which will collect viewpoints from authors who have already written on this topic. My suggestions on how to approach the issue will come at the very end of this part, and also from then on, all the rest of the thesis.

So, for this time, I have made a considerable bibliographic list of articles of researchers and activists under FOSS and Women keywords. Here are some of the most interesting ones:

The Fourth Oekonux Conference has just passed (27-29 March). My lecture was my first actual academic presentation of findings, which I have made in public. There were two feelings at the beginning: enthusiasm and disappointment.

Enthusiasm, because I really wanted to share my work and ideas, and I felt I had moved far from previous popular presentations done at Open Source conferences. I did not like to stick to the "one million dollar question" on WHY there are so few women in Open Source, I actually bypass this issue, and go deeper to see actually WHERE are the women in the FOSS movement, and what specific contributions they provide. Some answers to these questions might actually better motivate FOSS community groups to make efforts and encourage women's participation.

Disappointment, because all the male participants had left for another session (I heard a bit later that I have had a fierce competition with a famous lecturer), and all the female ones have stayed. Few minutes later, it was not so bad, when some late comers joined the conference, and we were actually almost as many women as men in the room.

So, in brief, my 1,5 hours lecture was not recorded, except on my small voice recorder, therefore with very bad quality. I listened to it again, in order to note the questions and the comments made by the participants (the worst part of the recording). So, here they are, in a summarized form, with some of the answers, also in résumé.

Conclusions.

• Women do valuable work in FOSS development, which is often informal, therefore invisible
• Majority of women do the “boring job” in FOSS projects, such as usability, training, documentation...
• Women have low confidence in their work, coming mainly from the fact they are not developers by education
• Need for minimization of the importance of programming, in order to value the work of “other contributors” and of users, for producing a better and widely spread code.

Following the next Debian-Women sexist discussion, related to the importance of women in computer science, Michael Norwick pasted a list of remarkable women in computer science. I knew many of them, but I liked to have them together. Thanks Michael!

Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852). born Augusta Ada Byron, was the only legitimate child of Lord Byron. She is widely known in modern times simply as Ada Lovelace. She is mainly known for having written a description of Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. She is today appreciated as the "first programmer" since she was writing programs — that is, manipulating symbols according to rules—for a machine that Babbage had not yet built. She also foresaw the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching while others, including Babbage himself, focused only on these capabilities.

Nous vivons une époque en accélération, sous l'emprise du déploiement impressionnant des technologies de communication et d'information (TIC) dont les répercussions s'étendent aux sphères sociales, économiques, politiques et culturelles. Partout dans le monde, l'inégalité d'accès ainsi que le faible taux de participation et de contrôle des TIC par les femmes sont flagrants.

The Free Softwrare Magazine has published, about a month ago, an article by Terry Hanncock, intitled Ten Easy Ways to Attract Women to Your Free Software Project. I did not read if for a long time, knowing what I can expect... Well, it was worse than I thought.

Are there "easy ways to attract women to free software projects"? I research this problem for years now, and I have not found and "easy solution". Not only this, but the advises the author provides do not match with the reality. I would even say, by quoting FLOSSPOLS and val Henson's guide on How to attract women in Linux, he has invented his home-made solutions.

This is great! But does this answer the reality?