Hi all,
I was going to reply to @GaelDuval’s recent tweet on twitter:
But then I read the replies he’d had and realised that the answer to his question is staring him in the face. Disrespectful and demeaning are two suitable adjectives. I know those replies were intended as funny, but honestly if any women who weren’t already following Gael read his tweet and then the replies I think they would probably be immediately turned off and not bother investigating /e/ any further.
There was one helpful reply, someone suggested contacting an organisation called Women in Tech, which will probably help. But the head of communications for /e/ is Veronique, so doesn’t she have some ideas about how best to communicate with other women? (I have made the assumption that Veronique is female, which she may of course not be so please excuse me if I made the wrong assumption).
Maybe getting some feedback from women on the /e/ brand, /e/OS UI, the core messages etc, would be helpful. Then you can adjust what you include in your tweets. Sometimes market research is worthwhile.
You could even contact Mitchell Baker at Mozilla, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind speaking to a like-minded individual about a topic which she’s interested in.
And the long term plan has to be to spend some time at schools showing girls and young ladies how interesting and relevant the STEM subjects are to what they want to do as a career. It’s a very long term plan, but there’s no alternative.
I had the very same feeling reading the replies to @GaelDuval 's tweet…
A terrible way to engage the conversation about inclusive dev and OSs.
My reflex was to ask my wife. She’s very into feminism so I definitely knew her answer would be mindful. She’s a digital influence manager for big companies so I knew the answer would be on point as well on this side of the question.
According to her:
there is no such thing as a gendered ROM and why should it even exist?
if women need or want something different from men, then the only thing to do is to make it available easily (on an app store for instance)
the focus on inclusive dev should be done for other targets and by different ways: greyscale mode, easy reading improvements, etc.
Right on Gregoire. I would use another synonym for funny. Unfortunately it’s a losing battle with attitudes such as this.
Dotcoma, perhaps come up with some intelligent suggestions.
If the two of you don’t understand that I’m not making fun of women but that I am, quite on the contrary, making fun of companies and their patronising attitude towards women, well… in my humble opinion you are part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
Condescending?? I think you should look in a mirror. @madbilly I don’t have any answers. Most discussions about this problem degenerate into the same situation as this has.
Over and out.
I’m wondering what will be next, after this plan of convincing or attracting more women to using eelo; get more people whom have certain sexual preferences or people from a particular race or religion to use eelo. Come on people, where is this suddenly need that every culture, race or gender should be equally using or doing something, coming from?
Is this going to happen with every aspect of life? Of course not. Eelo is still very unknown through the whole world and even in the tech/IT/cyber world its still very unknown. Per example, how many people do u think, know what Sailfish is? How can u expect in this very small, male dominant, community to have alot of women?
Gael shouldn’t ur goal be to get eelo more known to the whole world and u will see that more women will be using eelo aswell. Let’s get eelo as known as Android, apple, etc first. And after that let’s see which groups of people r not using eelo much…
I know from last publications I’ve read that there is an important gender bias in general in Silicon Valley.
I think that maybe showing publicly that /e/ foundation is treating all people exactly the same and showing opposition to this situation in the Valley could be a good starting point. Of course all those associations intended to help women to reach equality in tech world will be very helpful as well.
I recommend the reading of chapter 9 “Women and Silicon Valley” from “Silicon States” by Lucie Greene. It was published in 2018, so it’s very updated.
As someone who does public outreach, I’d suggest the way to attract more interest from women as well as many other folks not currently aware of or involved is to craft the website so it offers more progressively specific info about /e/, how it can help people (i.e. protect yourself from corporate surveillance, from ads following you all over the internet, from political disinformation campaigns that use your private information to brainwash you, etc.), what the apps and experience are like. For example, what is that browser going to feel like if I can’t use Chrome or Firefox? What about that maps app - can it give me accurate traffic and route time info? Think about your potential users, where they are coming from, and what they need to know. It took me a long time to find the info here I needed, and I am more tech- and info-savvy than many.
Hi @Gregoire, @Pablo and @AllBall, those are really good suggestions, I hope someone from the /e/ team is reading this.
Hi @dotcoma, I think if we ever need to explain that something is a joke, then it’s probably best not to say the joke in the first place. Having said that, I think you probably wrote it in good faith so we should give you the benefit of the doubt. Although as @vernr said, any suggestions?
@Eelo, 51% of the population of the planet are women and I see no good reason why this 51% will not be as interested in the topics which /e/ is promoting. The only reasons that women, in general may not be interested are probably due to historical cultural bias and stereotypes, which frankly we would all benefit from ignoring. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for @GaelDuval and the /e/ team to want to reach as many people as possible, from all demographics, with their message and to get them interested in what /e/ has to offer.
Anyway, some good ideas have come out here, so lets keep the discussion going.
Personally I have always wondered what a UI would look like and how it would work if it was designed entirely by a team of women based on market research and user feedback only from women. Maybe the /e/ team can explore this? After all, one of the reasons that women may not be interested in /e/ may be because they’re not adequately represented in its development and design choices.
Hi @madbilly, jokes are never made “in good faith”.
Jokes are made to piss people off and to provoke.
To tell people that they’re doing something wrong.
To explain that women don’t need “your help” or “our help”
to find this or another software project interesting.
Women who were interested in software made
significant contributions to the mission to the Moon.
And we’re talking about 60 (when it started) to 50 years ago,
when the world was far worse for women than it is today.
As long as the project is interesting and worth contributing to,
and as long as nobody is needlessly rude to women, but also
not condescending, some women will find /e/ interesting.
Those who don’t probably have other interests, and that is fine.
Hi all,
As my girly pseudo shows it (and so the pink colour, which is a funny pure coincidence - yes, it can be funny), I’m a happy female /e/ user since this summer.
Why did I get a /e/ phone ? Because I’ve had some annoying troubles with GAFAM, then I promised to get rid of them. A Linux computer to begin, and then I searched for a free OS phone. That’s why I arrived on the Eelo page months ago.
May I give you my female advice on this delicate subject ?
I think the good answer was given by @Eelo and also @AllBall :
No matter the rate of women interested at this time, the most important thing is to get /e/ better known in a general way. Women have the same interest for better privacy.
The second most important thing - as I see it - is to have a reliable OS. I think most women don’t want to waste time in trying to have their phone correctly work, searching in the parameters how to get the MMS well sending (what I did because I’m relatively “tech-woman” but I would have preferred not having to do it), posting on the forum to know why this %@!!?¤ app doesn’t work, etc.
Reliability, simplicity (not because we are stupid, but because most of we don’t have time or interest in computer engineering - of course, every women are different and this is my humble opinion).
Note that both qualities might interest everybody…
Regards
