I dunno. I doubt that the average woman could feel any more out of place than I do at a typical facility set up to create F/LOSS, or similar venues for that matter? Of course there are usually some people present who are pleasant to work with but almost always there are also enough that are socially inept to make me wonder why anyone would ever volunteer.

If women simply want to participate in OS what keeps them from defining projects and then recruiting from their own ranks to staff those projects?

OK, you can hit me now.

Bill

I often frequent the forums at Ben Goldacre’s site, and I think there can be a sort of self-sustaining process whereby the atmosphere is so testosterone-fuelled that you sometimes find youself unconsciously slipping into a more aggressive, male caricature.

I’m sure it’s often unintentional, but I can see how those environments become hostile or uncomfortable for women. Or sometimes bizarrely patronizing – for example, I vigorously criticized Rebecca Skloot for an aron ScienceBlogs a while back, only to have guys suggest that I shouldn’t have a go at her because “she’s hot.”

In short I guess that it seems that whatever the prevailing attitude is towards women, it’s still very much “us and them”.

In terms of writing, I want to reach the biggest audience I possibly can, and the reason is partly because I like watching the little numbers on the hit counter getting bigger, but mostly because I’m passionate about my message, and I won’t be happy until every man and woman of voting age responds to every half-baked government plan with the cry “evidence, or STFU!”

To do that, I have to figure out how to reach the audience. I write now for a couple of other sites, and for each of them it’s taken time to adapt to the audience. That’s actually a harder skill than a lot of people realise in my opinion – adapting your writing to different audiences. And the response is still largely from men.

I’m conscious as well that I screw up from time to time. There are areas of gender that I’m sure I’m very ignorant about, and I’m aware of that, but actually fixing it in my own writing can be tricky at times. There’s only so much I can see, looking at my writing with my own eyes.

I’m not talking about casual sexism so much here, but more subtle things, like the way I structure an argument, or open a piece, or the language I use. It’d be interesting to see if there’s any research for example on whether posts structured different ways appeal more to different demographics.

Anyway, I’m rambling on terribly, so I’ll pause for now. Great post

Martin
layscience.net
liberalconspiracy.org/author/martinr/