Re: Announcing KDE-Women!

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Re: Announcing KDE-Women!
by Bill on Wednesday 21/Mar/2001, @02:54

So now we have read the opinions of all three sides: women, men, and certain people posting under male names ;-).
What I concluded is: there are two real arguments for that new site: women are somehow "afraid" of being part of the "main" KDE Project, or they would like to be part of a smaller group that they feel is closer to them in some way.
To make it clear: If this new project makes women (or anyone, for that matter) more willing to contribute, or just feel better about KDE, then OK: by any means, go on with it. We're happy with it and we warmly welcome you (no kidding). And remember to also create new projects that have importance: KDE-blind, KDE-disabled etc. Isn't it a shame that we have KDE-Women, but dont't have KDE-Disabled? What do you think?

Now some specific answers:

You're telling us that KDE is male-dominant, but how do you know? Did you check the German, French, Hebrew, etc. dictionaries for the names? If yes, why? Do you need to know if we are males or not?
We do not need paranoia here. Nobody discriminates anyone else in KDE.
You're also telling that we, men, are welcome at KDE-Women. OK, thanks, but why then is it called KDE-Women ? Come on, if it says "Dog exhibition", you do not take your cat there. If you do, then, well, it's a pet exhibition, not a dog exhibition.

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about our name
by eva on Wednesday 21/Mar/2001, @06:55

You are right - there might be groups like KDE-blind, KDE-disable etc. but don't you compare wrong things? Women are about 50% of the society, and we don't need help necessarily. We simply want to do something instead of being dump users. And how many female developers are there out of the hundreds of KDE coders? (I found two who are very happy to meet other women in KDE-Women). This is not about a seperation of KDE, it is more about an addition, if this project works out ;-)

So why are we called KDE-Women? KDE-women is not _for_ women, but mainly _by_ women. That is why we cannot do KDE-disabled or KDE-blind. I am not disabled and I am not blind, so I cannot talk for them as well as I cannot talk for men.
By the way - why do you go to a "dog exhibition" if you are a human and not a dog? ;-) In KDE-Women you can see our work and hopefully it will spread to the other projects as soon as KDE-women has grown.

I can't remember the word "discrimination" to be used on the KDE-women pages. I don't feel discriminated! If i felt discriminated, I wouldn't use KDE... But I experienced that men and women do things in a different way, also they still can successfully do the same things. And as a woman I simply feel better, if there are people around me that do it in a similar way as I do and I don't have to talk about why and how (as we do on this page...;-) ).

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Re: about our name
by Bojan on Wednesday 21/Mar/2001, @08:09

I don't want to judge if the establishment of KDE women is right or not. It is there and we have to live with it. The women obviously felt it is necessary to create KDE women site and they did it and that is their right. I work as a teaching assistent on the Faculty for Computer and Information Science and I teach programming, algorithms and data structures and computer graphics. In all these years, I have noticed that male students can learn abstract concepts of programming skills much better than female, although there is no such genetic difference between two sexes that would imply this. For example, there is probably some genetic reason, why women can't run 100 meters below 10 seconds, but I see no reason why they could not learn how to write good programs. Don't get me wrong, I know some very good female programmers, but they are a rarity. Now how this connects with KDE women? I have noticed also that there is a stereotip between male students, that is, that women can't write programs (just like, one more usual, that women can't drive a car). And this is bad. I understand that many women, who get the job as a programmer, feel a bit silly if men don't really trust them, and men are usually a majority in all software companies. For that reason, I see nothing bad in creating KDE women. This way we can all become aware of their involvement in KDE project. We know that they are good artist (that's probably why KDE icons look so nice and so professional) and we might soon find out that they are capable of playing much more important role in KDE project. With KDE women site, I believe, they can proudly say to everybody: look, this is our work, this is our part in KDE project. And I don't see nothing bad in that. BTW, isn't KDE project and Open Source in general all about freedom of choice? If you like it, use it, if you miss some features, just add them, if you want to create KDE women site, just go for it. This is just my opinion.

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KDE icons
by eva on Wednesday 21/Mar/2001, @08:21

Hehe... The KDE icons are mainly made by tackat who is a man... This again shows how missleading stereotypes can be ;-)

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Re: KDE icons
by Bojan on Wednesday 21/Mar/2001, @08:23

you are absolutely right about stereotypes, I apologize.

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