It has not been a good week for women in Tech.
Probably a quarter of the people in my friends list are women in tech, and so probably aware of what’s been going on this week, so I suppose this entry isn’t for you! There are no shortage of opinions online already, so lucky for me I can just link to events and responses! No work for me, some wonderful women have already said what I wanted to say :)
March 26th – Kathy Sierra posted her Death threats against bloggers are NOT “protected speech” (why I cancelled my ETech presentations) blog entry detailing how she received graphic and sexual death threats that made her afraid to leave her house.
Wow. Let’s not qualm about details (detractors from women issues have done plenty of that), this is a promienent women in tech who was taken down by misogynistic slanted threats.
Carla Schroder summed it up nicely (if emotionally!) here: Open Season on Women. The anger and emotion behind the post adds so much to it!
March 26th – Myriam Schweingruber posted to the Ubuntu-Women mailing list about the private email asking for her personal information and pictures after posting on the German Ubuntu list. Clearly not close to the same caliber of the previous event, but and example of the sort of thing that happens every day to those of us who are active in FOSS communities.
March 28th – Caroline Ford Left Ubuntu-UK. There was a posting of a sexist joke on the mailing list and her response to the list that she felt it was a breach of the Ubuntu Code of Conduct. Following this someone posted on her journal asking her to leave the Ubuntu UK planet because she swore in a journal entry that was posted on the planet (I read her journal, the swearing seemed so appropriate to me that I had completely forgotten about it!). Men swear all the time on Ubuntu planets, she appears to have been singled out after the incident on list. Unfortunately the online archives of this thread about Caroline on the U-W Mailing list archives are not up to date so I can’t post to much about the U-W resonse, but the group will probably be going to the Community Council about this incident (there is no need for Caroline to waste more time on this – that’s what the U-W project is for!).
For all these events I’ve seen a lot of men saying things like “I don’t know what to do, I just ignore these people, they’ll go away” for all of you I give you this great blog entry that
What some folks can do, if they choose. Just go read it, I tried to quote part of it to give you a sense and I found myself quoting the entire thing.