Bug #2 ?

[WebDrake]

Unless you have something more recent than that this is a topic of on going research with people sitting on both sides of the fence but nothing has been refuted, and there are a lot of academic papers supporting my claim, the above one only took second to find.

OK, I'll bite.

The spatial awareness difference between the sexes is very well established in the literature (another is that women are socially more sophisticated) but I don't believe there is any firm conclusion about why it is so.

I can tell you that a friend of mine did research into this topic in the context of "learned helplessness", which is exactly what it sounds like: people do indeed learn to be helpless at particular things, and it looks like this plays a major part in the lack of spatial awareness skills.

You can provide spatial awareness training for people, and interestingly, whereas men generally see a small benefit from it, women can experience one of two things: a big benefit, or an actual loss of ability. This ties in with the "learned helplessness" hypothesis. One of the issues is that training has to address the fact that the person has this problem, otherwise it will reinforce their received mental ideas. ("I got that thing wrong, it just goes to show I can't do this, I should just give up now ....")

My impression is that if you take steps to deal with the "learned helplessness" phenomenon, you will see differences like this vanish.

It's not so different from the medical study of caffeine. The research was believed to show a positive effect on alertness from caffeine intake. Then some bright spark realised that the people in the experiments hadn't been screened for coffee- or tea-drinking. New experiments were carried out in which all subjects went cold turkey on caffeine for several weeks prior to the experiment, and no caffeine benefits were observed. The "benefit" in the previous experiment was simply not suffering the side-effects of existing addiction.

Studies which don't compensate for phenomena like learned helplessness are probably going to run into a similar problem.

[ZeBob]

I think you should read this:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO

This one may interest you too : http://tille.xalasys.com/cyberfeministe/HOWTO/

[glabouni]

I think, this situation is not adressed in the correct way. why focus only on not enough women in linux/sciences when we could also say too many men in linux/sciences? Actually thinking this way is making a big mistake from the very start.
when one think in terms of man/woman, uncousciously one thinks of straight people and rules out bisexual, homosexual, transgender, ... this is a matter of social and cultural programming and conditioning.

To get the situation right, you have to envision it in a global way and put things into perspective. "think global, act local". when you can comprehend this very situation without making any gender differentiation, that means you're getting it right.

Actually I've done quite a bit of research on this matter, it clearly appears that it has less to do with gender than with how people raise their children. The underlying of this parental behaviour being intricated with cultural and social matters, transmitted through traditions and originating in religion.
I could write pages and pages on this fascinating subject, telling you about how IQ test was modified with more sports questions because women were getting better score than men, pointing out that this gender segretation emerged from the christian religion partly as a strategy to convert people from paganism, and many others things from multiple different domains but I feel like this is not the right place for this and this is a subject of discussion that ends in flaming and reach the godwin point fast. But I encourage each and everyone interested in this to make their own research to come their own conclusion.

here is mine in a single line:
- if you want to get women into linux, simply get children into linux.

Please bear with me and keep in mind that children are the most important beings on earth and should be treated with the outmost respect. our role as elders is to protect them, to accompany them through childhood while giving them what really matters in life so they can transmit it to the next generation. ( time binding )

I don't think I need to explain that getting more women into linux is a long shot and will take a long time. over several generations you can only get a little women proprotion into linux. But if you get children into linux, it is easier as children look at grown-ups for models, and children will all turn into grown-ups and over a few generations a whole lot of people will have turned to linux. There's no secret here, tobacco industry main target is children and teens.

ask yourself if you were taught about linux as a child, would you be using windows as a grownup ?

A good start is to get rid of our own conditioning anf programming and to learn to think by ourselves again. For those who woud like to achieve that, I can point in the direction of general semantics: http://www.time-binding.org

hoping this will be helpful and adding to the discussion.

[bapoumba]

Hello !

Well, I think that on the long run, you are right, and I hope my kids (3 boys) will have even more opportunities and choices than I had.

But, I just partially agree with you.

I did not post here my deep thinkings, as it can be quite controversial. Briefly, I think this is some inheritance of "dark ages" () where women were considered to be inferior, the devil, have smaller brains, just name it.
How many psychiatric disorders have been named after women specific stuff, like hysteria for ex., not even talking about religious believes, witches (sound quite bad in French when you say that a woman is a "sorcière", sounds evil) when men were sorcerers (that sounds good, super-powers men that accomplish good magical things).

Then in the 1800, male medical doctors started to change that point of view, when they realized that the wealth of a society (and of its workers) depended on the health of all members, women and kids included. Then women started to be valuable when they were healthily giving birth. Then they got to vote a hundred years later

Now, do you (all) think this kind of discussion could have been done say just 5 year ago on a Linux forum ? I doubt it. Ubuntu made a difference, a very big one. Aiming at desktop integration, at end users not dipped into compiling kernels from childhood made it possible. Half of these end users can be women.

We always have to start somewhere.

[glabouni]

I would be delighted to know where you disagree with what I said here.
my guess is this is probably due to me not explaining myself clearly enough. And this for 2 reason:
- first reason is, this is my saying with my own words, but this is not my opinion, this is human history, it is quite well documented. I, myself had to accept this as a fact, many informations in many different domains all converging to this fact, and these informations are spread over centuries. I did my best at challenging this fact and now there is no way to deny it. Actually it's quite obvious when you're no more oblivious to it. And once again, do not take my word for it, make your own research, thinking and mind.

- second reason is what you posted as being controversial, is actually controversial and is the reason why I didn't want to write too much about it. What you think about "dark ages" happen to be absolutely true, and this written in human history.

Let me explain one point that I think I was not clear enough about: when I say that this is originating in religion, I'm not talking about people of faith and believers. I'm talking about people abusing those people of faith, a.k.a. clergy and other person who occupy a rank of power in religion hierachy.

I'm gonna assume here that you (the reader) know about christian religion history in Europe and the techniques used to gain power over the people ("converting them"), if you don't have at least some notions of it was done, please read about it and know that christmas was made a celebration day to help convert the many "pagan" people who were celebrating winter solstice (such as vikings for example), one of the many means used at the time. So clergy was aiming at converting the whole world to gain control and power over the people all over the world, and where it failed (vikings, japan, ...) shows us a lot about it was done. The point here is that where women were treated with respect and matriarcal societies before christianity conversion, were seeing women as potential evil after conversion.
The biggest problem here being christians burning all traces of previous history so the previous culture would die in a rapid turnover and to make room to create new memories to replace the erased ones. (an example of this method is how the hopi people were separated from their young by US government, youngs were sent to schools (brainwashed) and didn't want to hear about their own culture or simply don't believe in it anymore and disrespect their elders and their teachings).

And for centuries direct consequences of these have lead our society and culture to despise and look down on women as if they were less important/useful than men and placed under men in a hierarchy that don't even exist. Of course christianity is just an illustration of one of the things amongs many others that played a part/role in leading some human societies where they are today (money would be another one, but that's a whole other story). it is a pity that one of the worst happens to be the largest and I happen to have grown in it, but this is not hopeless as I'm a living example that it is possible to be born in such a society and not bear any of the society misbeliefs, which gave me and is still giving me a hard time living in this society.

in short, what you think about "dark ages" inheritance is absolutely true, look into history of christianity to get clues about the how and why of these "dark ages", look at what was in place before christianity wiped it out for insight of what was the role of women before "dark ages", you could be surprised.

One important thing to keep in mind is this one: "men really are superiors to women, this is absolutely true, can't be denied and I mean it" (HHOS)

[matthew]

I think bapoumba has made a great point. The ultimate goal would certainly be the equal treatment of people without focusing on extraneous attributes. However, we live in a world that is less than ideal, a world that sees those attributes and uses them as a part of decision making even when they are not necessarily applicable. For example, being female does not in and of itself have any real bearing on one's computer skills and yet many people act as if it does. Confronting this attitude is a necessary step before the idealism of glabouni's earlier post saying that we need to focus on the children.

I agree that for the sake of the future that children must be taught now, but in saying this as the sole step it sounds as if one might write off the current generation as hopeless and just move on so that in some 20-30 years women might have a chance. I'm not prepared to consider today's population expendable.

[bapoumba]

Hi everyone ,

two good papers from Joyce Park on venturebeat, regarding the "gender gap" in Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs, and suggesting a one-year, non-degree, Silicon Valley-sponsored program for women :
http://www.venturebeat.com/contribut...ng-gender-gap/
http://www.venturebeat.com/contribut...dest-proposal/

[matthew]

Hi everyone ,

two good papers from Joyce Park on venturebeat, regarding the "gender gap" in Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs, and suggesting a one-year, non-degree, Silicon Valley-sponsored program for women :
http://www.venturebeat.com/contribut...ng-gender-gap/
http://www.venturebeat.com/contribut...dest-proposal/

That was very interesting...

[glabouni]

while looking for an article about brain surgery, I found the following article on everything2.com website: she's so cute.
Worth a read IMO.

[Sef]

where women were considered to ... have smaller brains

From a medical standpoint, women's brains are smaller than men's; however, they have just as many neurons as men's brains. The neurons in women's brains are more compact. To put it another way, men's brains have more air in them.