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

[Emilie Laffray]

Hello Oleksiy,

I agree with you but I had no plan on going further than what I wrote
because honestly my point was more to support Kate in what she was saying.
I have already given a lot to politics in OpenStreetMap and I have no real
intention in having a second foray.

Working in IT and having a relatively successful career so far, I can tell
you that mentoring and role models are indeed important. I think role
models are overrated to some extent and that it depends on how strongly you
want to achieve something. Mentoring is something very useful and I do that
a lot but it is not just lack of mentors and role models.

I am all for more women to the forefront of leadership but I will not
accept a woman in a position just because she is a woman. As someone
mentioned, I will accept people who are competent at what they are doing
regardless of their gender, ethnicity, religion, choose your favorite
divider.  It takes time and effort to educate (I prefer this term because
it encompasses a lot more than just mentoring and role models) both men and
women.  Even if you could provide role models and mentors overnight,
perception and participation is not going to change overnight. There is a
clear inertial cultural and technical barrier to participation anyway.

I am very much a feminist and I do my bit to help in a very little way than
I can but I am not naive enough to believe that things will improve quickly
if you provide the right tools. My cynicism and my somehow pragmatic point
of view kind of get in the way of theoretical and wishful thinking. World
is full of inertia and it takes time and education to change mentality. I
could point out to more studies that women behavior are also reinforcing
the gender gap by being too imbalanced in one way like too many younger
children teachers and so on (I am too lazy to look for the reference). Does
it mean we should prevent women from actually teaching younger children and
have parity? In short, world is complex and it wouldn't hurt exploring some
ideas but we also have to recognize it will take some time even with good
will from everyone.

Look at what project hackidemia is doing and you will realize that many of
us are concentrating on training and enabling behind the scene. Also, what
you wrote about gender is completely true about privileged and non
privileged (look at afrimakers (1) for example). Anyway, there are way to
help by being active but you can also help behind the scene.

That said, I have no aspiration to being a role model. I will work towards
my goal and if it helps some people, so be it, but I will not go out of my
way just to be the perfect role model. I will however continue to help
people who come to me regardless of gender.

Emilie Laffray

(1) http://www.hackidemia.com/afrimakers/


On 27 September 2014 12:42, Oleksiy Muzalyev <oleksiy.muzalyev at bluewin.ch>
wrote:

>  Hello Emilie,
>
> Still Josef Reagle in his study *"Free culture and gender gap"* [1]
> identifies a lack of female role models as a major cause of gender gap:
> "...identifies hindrances to participation including *a* *lack of*
> mentors and *role models*, discriminating language usage, a
> male–dominated competitive world view, and a lack of women–centered
> perspectives...". He is not writing just about a sexism.
>
> The WMF in its *"Gender gap strategy 2013"* [2] also mentions: *"...propel
> women to the forefront of leadership*...".
>
> I would like also to remark, in general, that women are not a minority. In
> most industrial countries women are a growing majority [3].
>
> [1] http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4291/3381
> [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_gap_strategy_2013
>  [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio
>
> Avec mes meilleures salutations,
> Oleksiy
>
>
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