Re:Meet India’s Women Open Source Warriors
by gumby on Monday February 05, 2018 @12:07PM
(#16310171)
> is it necessary to state your sex, gender, sexual orientation, race, country, age or any other personal indicator when producing code?
To answer the text of your question, is it necessary? No.
Here's why it can be good, though. Programming seems to be considered by default (by most people) to be a male activity. If you are a woman considering the field, knowing that there are other women involved may make you feel less likely to be alienated. Just as a man interested in the hobby of knitting knows that he'll spend a lot of time in the company of women and may risk being considered odd (I have a male friend who is a knitter who mentioned this to me). So you may be doing a service to others by announcing these parameters (and potentially at some cost to yourself by doing so, per the WiFi SSIDs mentioned in the article...and worse). Writing a for loop is not inherently male or female, but being around people who casually and unthinkingly make comments about breast size just might turn certain people away from their chosen field.
These stereotypes are both arbitrary and real. If you attended MIT you might even be able to guess when I was there when I say that I think of women there predominantly doing Chem E, Mech E, Biology, Aerospace and EE, while men predominating in CS, Math and Physics. I hear things have become less specific since, which shows both the arbitrariness and yet reality of these stereotypes, and how actual effort can improve things (the institute has been making a genuine, if inadequate IMHO, effort to be more welcoming to women)
To answer the text of your question, is it necessary? No.
Here's why it can be good, though. Programming seems to be considered by default (by most people) to be a male activity. If you are a woman considering the field, knowing that there are other women involved may make you feel less likely to be alienated. Just as a man interested in the hobby of knitting knows that he'll spend a lot of time in the company of women and may risk being considered odd (I have a male friend who is a knitter who mentioned this to me). So you may be doing a service to others by announcing these parameters (and potentially at some cost to yourself by doing so, per the WiFi SSIDs mentioned in the article...and worse). Writing a for loop is not inherently male or female, but being around people who casually and unthinkingly make comments about breast size just might turn certain people away from their chosen field.
These stereotypes are both arbitrary and real. If you attended MIT you might even be able to guess when I was there when I say that I think of women there predominantly doing Chem E, Mech E, Biology, Aerospace and EE, while men predominating in CS, Math and Physics. I hear things have become less specific since, which shows both the arbitrariness and yet reality of these stereotypes, and how actual effort can improve things (the institute has been making a genuine, if inadequate IMHO, effort to be more welcoming to women)