_{Disclaimer: This wiki is intended only as a think tank where we can share our thoughts and ideas while trying to decide which direction to take in regards to the potential creation of a Gentoo Women project. At this point in time the project is unofficial and any views expressed here are those of the poster(s) and not necessarily held by the Gentoo Foundation or any of its developers.}

“Women make up only 30% of regular computer users, and as little as 2% of Linux users.”

For Gentoo, on the developer side this percentage is even smaller, less than 1% of Gentoo developers are female. Several initiatives has been created over the years to encourage more females to be involved with FOSS development. Debian has succesfully run their Debian Women project since March of 2004, seeking to diversify and balance the Debian project by actively engaging and encouraging interested women to become more involved with Debian. They promote involvement by increasing the visibility of active women, providing mentoring and role models, and by creating opportunities for collaboration with new and current members of the Debian project. Some of the resources and activities offered by the Debian Women project are:

• They run a mailing list for discussion of related issues.
• They also run an IRC channel for discussion of related issues, technical questions and to allow women who are interested in contributing to meet each other and some of Debians current contributors.
• They organise BOF discussions at Linux conferences, promoting discussion of issues facing women and their involvement with Linux, and Debian in particular.
• They give talks at conferences, universities, LUGs and schools.
• They actively seek to encourage and educate the Debian community to increase understanding of the specific issues facing women who wish to contribute more.

Inspired by Debian Women and LinuxChix several other development communities have followed suit and created their own initiatives. Fedora, Ubuntu, KDE and GNOME to mention some.

Recently the idea of creating a similar initiative within Gentoo was floated, after some internal discussion we opened the topic up for input from the user community, there was an article in the GWN and a discussion thread was also created on the forums. Although the response was overwhelmingly positive some concerns were also raised. These concerns and the potential scenarios they pose needs to be looked at before the project goes live. We do however, believe that a Gentoo Women project could be beneficial to the community provided it was approached from the correct angle.

The following two sub sections are taken from HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux _{which is © 2002 Val Henson and the copyright statement can be read here.}

A sentiment I hear frequently: “What problem? There’s no problem! Sexism is dead! Women are staying out of Linux because they want to!” If you feel this way, you may change your opinion by the time you finish reading this HOWTO. I also used to believe that sexism was dead. Shortly after joining several women in computing mailing lists, I realized how wrong I was.

Week after week, women have new stories about how they were discriminated against and insulted because they were women. These stories aren’t decades old, nor do they involve people who grew up when sexism was more acceptable. These are day-to-day experiences of today’s women, in modern settings, who are being driven out of their chosen profession by sexism. This isn’t theoretical–many women actually leave the field of computers entirely because of blatantly sexist incidents involving superiors at work or at school.

Read the links below for my favorite example of modern-day sexism:

Initial post to the Sydney LUG mailing list, by a woman:

http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/slug-chat/2001/October/msg00286.html

Follow-up posts diagnosing the problem as “over-stressed female”:

http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/slug-chat/2001/October/msg00290.html

http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/slug-chat/2001/October/msg00312.html

Gee, surprise, these two responses are enough to drive her away:

http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/slug-chat/2001/October/msg00313.html

Hysterically funny and heroic response from another woman:

http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/slug-chat/2001/October/msg00317.html

Despite the pointed sarcasm, obnoxious man still doesn’t get it:

http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/slug-chat/2001/October/msg00319.html

A perfect response from a man who does get it:

http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/slug-chat/2001/October/msg00321.html

Sexism is alive and well, and it is driving women out of Linux. You can argue that the Linux users joking about “over-stressed females” in the above posts are ignorant, or stupid, or well-meaning, or should in some way not be labeled sexist, but the result of their actions is that women are leaving Linux, something we would like to prevent.

Please read on

Val Hensons HOWTO has a few suggestions of how to encourage women in Linux, these are a few of the things she pointed out as Dos and Donts.

1. Don’t tell sexist jokes, do protest sexist jokes.
2. Don’t call people bitches (or other derogatory words), do show some respect.
3. Don’t take the keyboard away (Someone asks a question, and instead of telling that person the answer, you take away the keyboard and type in the command yourself. Don’t do this! It makes it much more difficult to learn and it makes the other person feel stupid and helpless.), do give direction and explain them clearly.
4. Don’t make sexual advances towards women or ignore them, do treat them as normal people and act friendly.
5. Don’t complain about the lack of women in computing, do encourage the few who are involved.
6. Don’t stare and point when women arrive, do treat them politely.
7. Don’t treat women stereotypically, do treat them as normal people.
8. Don’t criticize too much, do compliment.
9. Don’t make new people feel unwelcome, do help them get involved.

As you may note, some of the above are geared towards LUG meetings and similar events, and those left out is even more so.

NOTE: The above is not intended as proposed guidelines for Gentoo Women, it is merely included as a reminder of some of the problems women face and as inspiration should we need to ever make guidelines beyond ‘common sense’.

When the subject of creating the project came up one of the questions that kept popping up was “What would we call it?,” ideas ranged from Gentoo Girls, Gentoo Chicks, La Femme Gentoo to Gentoo Women. The latter being what most people felt comfortable with, however, the unofficial ‘working name’ is currently project repogirl, aptly named after repoman, Gentoo’s QA checker.

The Gentoo Women project has yet to be officially birthed, however, you may participate by helping out here on the wiki, brainstorming, asking questions, comparing pros vs cons or just by sending us your input on the idea. We have an Ideas page, a Timeline, and you can check out who is Involved.

Questions and feedback can be directed to the Gentoo User Relations project. You can e-mail us at userrel@gentoo.org, visit us in #gentoo-userrel on irc.freenode.net or subscribe to our mailing list by sending an empty e-mail to gentoo-userrel+subscribe@gentoo.org.

You may also wish to look at Other Projects offered by the User Relations project.

Are you looking at getting involved with the Gentoo project? There are several ways to go about this, firstly you may want to take a look at our Staffing Needs page. We also encourage prospective developers to become active on bugzilla, squash some bugs and our development recruiters will soon notice you! You may also wish to participate in Bugday which takes place the first Saturday of each month in #gentoo-bugs on irc.freenode.net where we test, discuss and resolve bugs. Bugday offers a great opportunity for developers and users to get to know eachother and is therefor an excellent opportunity for potential new devs to be noticed. For more information about bugday you may wish to contact the bugday team at bugday@gentoo.org

The Gentoo Linux Documentation team who provides users with clear and concise documentation always look for technical writers, editors/proofreaders and translators. For more information about becoming part of the documentation team, please have a look at the Gentoo Linux Documentation Policy

Gentoo Weekly Newsletter, the GWN often look for contributors of translators. Check out the GWN Overview to find their contact information.

#gentoo IRC channel, knowledgeable users are encouraged to come and help out in #gentoo on irc.freenode.net

#gentoo-dev-help IRC channel, anyone wishing to learn more about ebuild development and/or Gentoo development is welcome to come ask in #gentoo-dev-help on irc.freenode.net, where developers and other users are waiting to help.

Project Sunrise provides a starting point for users wishing to contribute to Gentoo, the project encourage users to write ebuilds and under close supervision it is ensured that the ebuilds meet Gentoo QA standards.

• Debian Women seeks to balance and diversify the Debian Project by actively engaging with interested women and encouraging them to become more involved with Debian.
• Ubuntu Women provides a platform and encouragement for women to contribute to Ubuntu.
• KDE Women building a community of female KDE developers and users.
• GNOME Women encourages women to contribute to GNOME projects.
• LinuxChix community of women involved with Linux.
• Systers community for technical women in computing.
• Fedora Women provides a central forum and a point of support for the often under-represented (female) side of Fedora’s Community.
• GenderChangers a nonprofit organisation by women for women, its primary goal being to improve women’s understanding and skills with regards to computer hardware.
• /etc a yearly gathering of women interested in technology, with its roots from the Gender Changer Academy and the FLOSS communities.
• HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux by Val Henson.
• Women in Free Software - FLOSSPOL FINDINGS^PDF by Hanna M Wallach.