Ben Burton: I suspect you've missed the point somewhat. AIUI she does not fear that people will bully her because she's female.
Jaldhar H. Vyas: I think instead of guessing at what we think Helen is saying we shouldjust go by what she actually did say and let her respond to any misrepresentations on her own. It's the gentlemanly thing to do :-)
:)I initially meant something more like what Ben says: that women are going to be worried more about subtle sexism than overt sexism in debian.
However, after reading over some of the posts to this thread, I think that was probably wrong. Both kinds of sexism are evidently around and healthy in this environment. Of course not coming from all, or even the majority of people. It doesn't take many idiots in the community to put your average interested woman off, if we're going to have to deal with that kind of attitude. And you wonder why there are few female debian developers?!
People who haven't already, could learn from reading: http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/index.htmlespecially the section about the problems women face in approaching linux communities.
Helen.