[Osmf-talk] Reaching out and diversity (Was: Re: AGM and board elections)

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

2014-09-25 11:38 GMT+02:00 Kate Chapman <kate at maploser.com>:

> Hi Martin,
>
> What you are asking me for is problematic.  Pointing out specific sexism
> on the mailing lists could easily lead to backlash from those speaking that
> way. Unfortunately the Internet is not a safe place for women or many types
> of minorities these days. I honestly thought for quite a while before
> evening sending my email. I doubt many women within OSM would be willing to
> share that information.
>
>

While I partly understand your concerns, I think it is difficult to deal
with them when it is not clear what you are referring to (or how you put
it: "often just completely passes unnoticed"). Honestly, I am aware that
sometimes people get very emotional about stuff because they care, and in
this situation sometimes they write to the mailing list in a less
respectful way than they should (and maybe they regret later, and/or ask
for excusion), but nonetheless I cannot recall any case of sexism (i.e.
discriminating people (in a male dominated society these are typically
women) because of their gender, applying prejudices because of their
gender, etc.).

In fact, while I do not advocate this, it might even be seen as a sign of
equal treatment if a woman gets a rude answer from someone who would have
written the same rude answer to a man (as a community we should of course
try not to be aggressive or rude, to any instance of any gender).

There is no doubt that women are heavily underrepresented in OSM (like they
are in many other activities as well, and like men are underrepresented in
other kind of activities), and that this had and has consequences for the
system osm as a whole (e.g. which are common tags, which areas of life are
less elaborated in detail, what gets tagged, etc.), but I wouldn't call
that sexism per se.

cheers,
Martin
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