Re: debian and women? from DWN #10
On (25/03/04 14:41), Emma Jane Hogbin wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 24, 2004 at 06:10:56PM -0700, Monique Y. Herman wrote:
> > <http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2004/debian-vote-200403/msg00067.html>
>
> I've personally found the Debian community to be an equal opportunity kind
> of place. Help is given equally to all, and RTFMs are thrown out equally
> to all. That said and done--I personally believe that women are better at
> presenting their problem and therefore are more likely to get a useful response.
> They've probably also tried searching for the answer before asking for
> help and are more informed. This is based on my experience on-line as well
> as a tech instructor at two community colleges. I teach classes where
> there are 20 men and maybe 3 or 4 women--the women (on average) are much
> happier reading manuals on their own than the men. A higher percentage of
> men would rather that I read the manuals to them (they don't want to do
> their own learning--they just want to be spoonfed). There are always some
> on both sides of the fence--but the women tend to be a little more
> self-sufficient than the men.
Yep! I confess. My partner has been much better at finding answers to
my Debian glitches than I (and she's not even running Linux). Generally
she's much better at googling all round ;) Although, I like to think
I'm getting better as I read more d-u posts.
In summary, I find d-u a friendly, egalitarian sort of list. Not that I
have much to compare it with. I'm also on d-powerpc and I don't recall
seeing many posts from women. Either they don't run Macs or stick to
MacOS perhaps? ;)
>
> With the exception of one occassion I've never felt uncomfortable on *any*
> Linux-related list (other tech lists yes, but never Linux related). The
> one occassion was on the Debian IRC. Whenever possible I use my name as my
> handle (emmajane)--I used to be Newt, but that raised more problems
> because I was a Monty Python Newt, not an Aliens Newt or a Gingrich
> Newt...sorry, I got distracted for a moment. So anyway, I asked if there
> was anyone who could help me with XYZ, someone made a sexist comment, I
> said, "Fuck you." And the sexist commenter was yelled at by everyone else
> on the channel and then booted. So that's really as bad as it gets for me.
>
> Sometimes on software-specific mailing lists I have problems. I won't name
> any names *cough*openoffice*cough* I had to send my original email back to
> the list many times because people weren't reading what I was actually saying. I
> quoted all of the FAQs I'd tried but not succeeded with, and their
> response was to try exactly what I said I'd already done. I don't *think*
> it was a gender problem though, I think it was just that the list is high
> volume, and people are used to sending off-the-cuff replies to stupid
> users. Or maybe I'm just naive.
>
> Yes, I do get a little entourage when I go to my LUG meetings; however, not all
> the women do. I think it's because I engage with the presentation. I belly
> laugh when people say funny things, I ask questions, I get involved.
>
> I think that Debian is one of the least newbie-friendly distros because of
> the install process not being a pointy-clicky GUI. Newbies assume that it
> will be too hard to run the distro just because they've heard horror
> stories about the install process. I definitely get a *lot* of raised
> eyebrows when I tell people I run Debian. Not because I'm female...but
> because I'm not using RedHat, SuSE or Mandrake.
Debian is the only distro I've tried and although it is a steep learning
curve, the more I learn and read, the more I'm convinced it's the best distro
around both philosophically and technically.
>
> > Just kind of wondering what others think about this. I don't find
> > debian off-putting, but then, I use vim, so maybe my interpretation of
> > "userfriendly" is a bit unconventional.
>
> Me too. Vim rawks! ;)
Vim does rock but I've never tried emacs. It's going to be a while
before I feel I really use vim properly ;)
Regards
Clive
--
http://www.clivemenzies.co.uk
strategies for business
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