The aim of this task is to brainstorm, discuss and implement actions that Promo can carryout that will help increase the adoption of KDE software on behalf of women and increase the number of women contributors in our community.
You can find more details in the parent task T13772.
| Status | Assigned | Task | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open | None | T13772 Promote diversity within KDE | ||
| Open | None | T13773 Promote diversity within KDE: Help increase the participation of women |
From what I have seen, the key is to get girls and young women involved in the development process. I'm not sure that KDE has the energy to start something new, but perhaps we could partner with some already-active groups such as https://www.blackgirlscode.com/ Black Girls Code, and https://girlswhocode.com/ Girls Who Code. https://www.womenwhocode.com/ is another resource.
GNOME has had success with Outreachy. In my opinion, if we are serious about this, KDE should hire someone to get this program and running. It requires not just administration time, but fundraising to pay each intern. I feel that funding an administrator would be necessary to keep it going -- and if we start and then stop, it will be far less effective. It takes time and persistence (and numbers) to move the needle.
If we decide to do this, be prepared for a LOT of push back. Outreach to specific groups is so often framed as "reverse discrimination," perverse as that might be. Or maybe I'm a negative Nellie because of how unfriendly my culture is to technical women.
Development process, design process, organisational process, ... preferably all of them, of course, getting more girls and women involved in any or all would help.
I'm not sure that KDE has the energy to start something new, but perhaps we could partner with some already-active groups such as https://www.blackgirlscode.com/ Black Girls Code, and https://girlswhocode.com/ Girls Who Code. https://www.womenwhocode.com/ is another resource.
Yes. Great resources. Thanks!
GNOME has had success with Outreachy.
In view of their success, does it make sense to also partner with GNOME on this? I think yes.
In my opinion, if we are serious about this, KDE should hire someone to get this program and running. It requires not just administration time, but fundraising to pay each intern.
Yes.
I feel that funding an administrator would be necessary to keep it going -- and if we start and then stop, it will be far less effective.
Oh yes.
It takes time and persistence (and numbers) to move the needle.
Yes. It sounds like we need to coordinate with Onboarding. Subscribing @neofytosk for his input.
If we decide to do this, be prepared for a LOT of push back. Outreach to specific groups is so often framed as "reverse discrimination," perverse as that might be. Or maybe I'm a negative Nellie because of how unfriendly my culture is to technical women.
You are not a negative Nellie, Promo has experienced this first hand a lot. You just have to start typing "divers-..." to get a bunch of morons squealing about "reverse discrimination" and "meritocracy".
I used "development" in the broadest sense. I consider myself a KDE developer, for instance although I don't produce software or help get it out the door. But helping to keep the community healthy, helping to recruit new community members, and helping a bit to promote KDE count as development.
Naturally we want diversity throughout the community, but Paul's point about white, middle-class men developing software that mostly appeals to white middle-class men is so true. At Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit a couple of years ago, one young woman presented her game that she developed for her classmates and younger kids too, to strategize how they would help a character who got her period unexpectedly and had blood-stained clothing. Would any guy have thought and up and developed a game like that?
I think not.
We don't know what is missing while we lack it.
Naturally we want diversity throughout the community, but Paul's point about white, middle-class men developing software that mostly appeals to white middle-class men is so true. At Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit a couple of years ago, one young woman presented her game that she developed for her classmates and younger kids too, to strategize how they would help a character who got her period unexpectedly and had blood-stained clothing. Would any guy have thought and up and developed a game like that?
Can we contact her @valorie? This seems a very good opportunity to involve women as end-users.
I am adding more women developers (to use @valorie's excellent definition of the word) as I think of them. Please help by subscribing other people I may be missing.
At Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit a couple of years ago, one young woman presented her game that she developed for her classmates and younger kids too, to strategize how they would help a character who got her period unexpectedly and had blood-stained clothing. Would any guy have thought and up and developed a game like that?
@allyson also suggested something related to this. Maybe Korganizer or Event Calendar plugin or add on that would help women chart their periods would be a helpful addition to either of those applications? I have no intention of reducing this to a conversation on women's reproduction processes, but, as the topic has come up... Maybe @allyson can step in and fill us in on what she had in mind.
Thank you Paul for adding me in this group. As an industry, yes we do seem to have a problem attracting women to this field, especially in the open source community. I haven't done my research properly but had a thought, what if we do some kind of Mentor-ship program.
For an instance : If we are planning to focus on school girls we could start as a career counselling.
In India schools assign few days for career counselling, where there are lots of people from MBA, Medical, Accountancy field. But it is very rare that a software developer give any routine sessions. It is a sort of Guest Lecture and depending on the enthusiasm of students they have a workshop for a day. All these guests lectures I have attended are very monotonous, students participate because it is compulsory, very few are interested in these lectures.
So instead of making a boring routine lecture we can use some of the factors that young girls would love, enjoy and learn from it. Factors that we (Girls) love : curiosity - we have a thing for solving problems, we love to imagine stuffs, we love planning and organising and keeping those factors in mind we can make a lecture on something like " A day being a software developer" this one topic has so so many things to discuss on, we can ask our KDE developers to share some fun facts and how did they decide to become a software developer video (it would be great if we have female KDE developers) and even we can make them realise that open source community is not only about coding there are so many other areas.
To make it interactive we can ask their opinion in the topic like "what can we do on KDE's 25th birthday", that ways we can figure out those who find promo stuff amusing , and once we have those students we can ask Paul, Aniqa, Allyson to help and mentor them.
As it is a start without spending much we can see and learn the myths girls have about the open source community and and our local KDE developers who are interested can participate in this.
Yeah we would need some kind of program for those who are interested and wish to learn coding, for that we could use our Season of Kde and maybe we could give a thought on stipend with a certificate and goodies.
I like the idea of career counselling maybe we can add this as one of the things we can do under the KDE Network platform. I think the KDE Network can be a very good opportunity to increase diversity.
I am glad you liked the idea Aniqa. I think it will be a great idea to include it in KDE Network platform. We will need to do the research for this but I guess through this we will be able to outreach a lot more people.