Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
Do you ever wonder if it's in fact a problem that needs to be fixed at all? Maybe it's true that no matter how much encouragement and positive gender roles you give to girls for nerdy subjects like computers or technology, they just have a natural predisposition to not be attracted to them. I sometimes wonder why nobody seems to be in a rush to encourage more boys to knit, bake cookies, or take up sewing.
But they are and here's the proof! :) http://www.menwhoknit.com/ http://www.menknit.net/ I am sure there are many other such sites for knitting, baking and sewing!Now, I don't knit (though I do intend to learn one of these days), and most of the stuff I do is in fields that are quite or very male-dominated. In these fields one is aware of the various groups that promote the activities of women. I would be guessing that in female dominated fields there are similar groups promoting the acitivies of men who want to be involved in that, and rightly so.
I would guess there would be fewer "men in whatever" groups compared with "women in whatever" groups simply because many female-dominated fields are considered to be lower status than male-dominated fields (early childhood care is a good example, in my culture at least), and thus guys who really want to get into that probably have even harder a time to do so because they have to buck societal expectations that they will pursue a higher-status endeavour. So, I reckon, that we are probably a few years ahead, maybe a few decades, in our "women in FLOSS" movement compared with the men in the equivalent things.
I think that as long as there are women who need a hand getting involved in things like Debian, or as long as there are men who need a hand getting involved in things like knitting, there is a place in the world for both such groups.
Helen