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

[Emilie Laffray]

Hello Jaak,

well first of all, I have met you several times and I can say that you have
not acted in any way that may have been interpreted as sexist at least from
my point of view.

Let's go back to the topic of being called "Darling" by a certain member of
the community while there is no one around to prove it. I think it is
sexist. That person doesn't particularly like me and it is fine, just call
me "moron", "idiot" and I will clearly get the message and while it may
sexism, it is probably not based on the neutrality of the term.

Now, "Darling" has a clear connotation and the way it was used was
particularly with the tone and the fact it was uttered when no one was
around particularly sexist.

How would you react if I call a guy "Mignon" (not in the sense of cute, but
in the French medieval term (1) but even in modern French, you can use it
in a negative connotation "Excuse moi mais tu es mignon, hein?") or
"Damoiseau" (again see (2))? It could rightly call this sexism from my
part. I have used terms that are voluntarily out of fashion but still
provocative towards men.

Again to reiterate the point I made earlier, I have seen much much worse
communities than OpenStreetMap on that topic and this was just an anecdote
to prove the point that it couldn't be just dismissed since no one
volunteered any anecdote. I have more but I don't see the point in
transforming anecdote into reasons. I find Simon's post quite constructive
and there is plenty of work on the topic of "minorities" and the point of
privileged and non privileged. I have been last year in Saint Lucia, and
that concept has been painful to see while talking (Surprise, surprise)
OpenStreetMap with several guides.

Emilie Laffray

(1) http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mignon
(2) http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/damoiseau


On 27 September 2014 04:45, Jaak Laineste (Nutiteq) <jaak at nutiteq.com>
wrote:

>
> On 27 Sep 2014, at 14:01, Oleksiy Muzalyev <oleksiy.muzalyev at bluewin.ch>
> wrote:
>
> The issue with diversity, for example, is that there less than 10% of
> women in the OSM project.
>
>
> I think it is even well below 5%. After hearing inspiring talk by Alyssa
> Wright in last year SOTM I totally agree than this is an issue by itself.
> Map is reflection of the world of mapmakers, so if only men do it, then you
> end up with underrepresented kindergartens and overrepresented brothel
> amenities, to give a trivial example. If OSM wants to be “objective model
> of the world” then it cannot be so much white-western-rich-male-geek
> centric.
>
> But I was asking for something different - examples of sexism (direct
> hostility against women) in OSM. Which, if it is perceived by women, could
> be of course one of the reasons why there are too many men. My problem is
> that I have failed to notice it. So I suspect that the diversity issue
> comes mainly from other reasons. I have some theories about that also, but
> this would be already another topic.
>
> Jaak
>
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