How to create a women-only linux course

[thomasmathiesen]

Dear all Linux women,

I give LPI (www.lpi.org) courses, and my wish is to give it for free to women here in The Netherlands. My only issue is that the discrimination office (a public office) has told me that it's illegal, unless I have a course that would only be for women (technically- / contents wise).

As it is important for us to have more women in the Linux community, this is something I'd love to do..

So, my question is; How can create a linux for women (only) course? How could I defend my action (giving it for free to women) if some guy starts taking me to court?

Kind regards,
Thomas Mathiesen
(thomas _at_ linprofs _dot_ com)

[az]

Computer science is computer science, regardless of your sex. I think it will be a lot more dammaging to modify the contents of the course to try to match some stereotypes about what women want or need from a course like this than to find another way to motivate women to get into the CS field.

What about just giving the course for free, under the pretense of encouraging women to get more involved in the linux community. Since the course is targeted at women, but nothing would prevent a man from taking it, you would be able to gracefully accomplish both goals at the same time.

I work in the medical field and a big change in the ratio of men to women in medical school happened about ten or fifteen years ago. This was action taken by seveal medical faculties back then, to actively increase the number of women enrolled. It worked, and now there are about fifty percent men and women in medical schools, without any such intervention anymore.

However, if you ask anyone who went to medical school ten or fifteen years ago, they are resentful (both the men and women) that there was such descrimination.

So, while it soved the problem, let's not mince words, it was descrimination. Perhaps there are ways to tackle the same problem in the CS field without being descriminatory?

[thomasmathiesen]

Sounds like a good start..

We are looking at doing this to get some media attention as well.. but, hey, we seriously want to have more women involved also.

Thanks for your feedback azz!

[geekchic9]

Maybe you can run the course online through LinuxChix (http://www.linuxchix.org/content/courses/running_a_course.html)?

Morgan