OpenWorldForum GenderEquality&Diversity

About OWF-GED

OWF-GED (Open World Forum - Gender Equality and Diversity) is a workgroup aiming to set up a track (conference and workshops) within the Open World Forum on the issue of diversity in Free/Libre/Open Source Software communities.

The workgroup is open to anyone willing to participate in elaborating this track.

For the 2010 edition, the workgroup will focus on women in FLOSS communities, as we consider women to be the cornerstone of diversity. For further editions the workgroup shall more broadly consider the diversity issue (younger/older contributors, non-technical profiles...).

2010 Objectives

Retro-Planning

• Meetings
  • Every 2 weeks lunch after the program committee until end of February
  • Then maybe every month (tbc)

• collaboration tools

-

mailing list

Alix

end of Week 2

-

wiki page creation

Alix

end of week 2

-

• welcome message: objectives of the conference, objectives of the work group, content, contribution policy…

first draft | Marine | end of week 3 stabilized version | all | end of feb

• Poll:
  • Identification of the targets | all | mid-feb
  • Poll conception | Marie | mid-feb
  • Tools definition | Véronique + Marine | mid-feb
  • Poll realization | all | end of February
  • Poll results end of April
  • Results analysis (all – organization of meetings) mid-may

• Documentation investigation
  • Investigation of the interesting studies available end of march
  • Meeting for coordination end of march
  • Synthesis (Dhunya, Delphine, Julia) mid-may

• identification of the program (all) end-may
  • plenary session
  • workshops
  • identification of the speakers / moderators

• communication
  • conception of the communication tools end-june
  • website end-may
  • invitation (speakers) end-may
  • invitation (audience) end-june
  • identification of the communication partners
  • diffusion (all) end-june

Minutes from our meetings and conf calls

January 13th, 2010: Workgroup foundation meeting

With: Alix Cazenave, Marie Buhot-Launay, Marine Soroko, Véronique Torner

Name to be defined: (brainstorming)
Gender Equality and Diversity
Gender Summit
Social Summit
Open Women conference at the OWF

Date OWF : Sept 29 to Oct 2
Day dedicated to “Open Society”

Debate on the topics

Questions:

• is there a discrimination against women in IT or a problem with less women studying IT?
• Difference between IT and floss: why?
  • Problem of time invested in work?
  • Because it is more technical?
  • Pb of meritocracy?
  • Technical (code) contributions are more valued than non technical - but still essential - contributions where we will find more women (design, documentation…)
  • And yet, women are more attracted by team work than men
  • Question: who is more contributing to Wikipedia?
• more women in IT in developing countries: Maghreb, India – maybe because IT is considered as a means of emancipation

Why?
education
stereotypes lead to the creation of a men's world where the lack of diversity tends to encourage the development of a mono-culture. Few women -> less women (problem of critical mass)

Organization of the conference

Format

Format studied = 1 day

• Morning: conference / round table
• Lunch: networking with other tracks (human factors, CIO summit)
• Afternoon: workshops

Content

diagnosis of the situation

• OWF Polls results
• testimony from a CIO (man or woman)
• synthesis of different studies

best practices

• Women association among communities (ex Ubutuntu women, Debian Women)
• Women association in IT: Girls in Tech, Webgirls, Cyberelles
• Policies made by trade association (Syntec, Intellect, Bitkom…),
• Government? (European Commission? Others?)
  

1. In communities:
   1. Mozilla: more consideration to non technical contribution
   2. Ubuntu: openness to feed-back from the contributors (even non technical), users - openness to non technical profiles
2. In companies:
   1. testimony from companies with mixed teams (added value: more team work on projects, with clients)
   2. Women Equity

proposed solutions

• more consideration for non technical contributions
• to provide all pupils with IT education at school
• more openness from communities
• debate: quotas or not quotas?

Workshops: to be defined later

More open to other forms of discrimination

Retro-Planning

• Meetings
  • Every 2 weeks lunch after the program committee until end of February
  • Then maybe every month (tbc)

• collaboration tools
  • diffusion list (Alix) end of Week 2
  • wiki page creation (Alix) end of week 2

• welcome message: objectives of the conference, objectives of the work group, content, contribution policy…
  • first draft (Marine) end of week 3
  • stabilized version (all) end of feb

• Poll:
  • Identification of the targets (all) mid-feb
  • Poll conception (Marie) mid-feb
  • Tools definition (Véronique + Marine) mid-feb
  • Poll realization (all) end of February
  • Poll results end of April
  • Results analysis (all – organization of meetings) mid-may

• Documentation investigation
  • Investigation of the interesting studies available end of march
  • Meeting for coordination end of march
  • Synthesis (Dhunya, Delphine, Julia) mid-may

• identification of the program (all) end-may
  • plenary session
  • workshops
  • identification of the speakers / moderators

• communication
  • conception of the communication tools end-june
  • website end-may
  • invitation (speakers) end-may
  • invitation (audience) end-june
  • identification of the communication partners
  • diffusion (all) end-june