Over the past weeks this topic has been blogged, posted, twittered, etc by many different parties.  Previously I had thought myself pretty middle of the road when it came to waving the feminist flag.  Having been the lone female on the team for most of my IT career, I have come to accept that this is still a non-traditional path for most women. 

However, following the commentary after Mark Shuttleworth's LinuxCon keynote blog.linuxtoday.com/blog/2009/09/mark-shuttlewor-1.html it became obvious to me that the FLOSS/OSS community has some pretty hardcore members who need to realize that it does not matter who is doing the coding or the migrations etc, as long as they are done well.  Unfortunately I see the comments as solidifying the sterotype that abounds regarding Linux users/programmers,

When I posted my comments on Identi & Twitter, I got some interesting feedback.  Some were disheartening, because I had been somewhat delusional in thinking that perhaps some of these 'guys' actually thought my previous posts were informative.  On the positive side, I received many comments asking me not to judge the Ubuntu community as whole based on the comments of a few.

I read Matt Zimmerman's comments bit.ly/16Bkk as well as a blog post on Linux Magazine bit.ly/3kUMYg and believe they were well thought out.  Too bad they also got such mixed reactions.  I then took a look at the management team at Canonical and wondered if Mark Shuttleworth had to explain what Linux really is to his COO Jane Silber?  I had met up with 4-5 guys from the Canonical team at VMworld in Sept and did not leave with the feeling that  I was not  taken seriously.  In fact, I felt some camaraderie as we have a common goal of bringing Ubuntu to the forefront globally, and leveraging Canonical support lends some credibilty to this endeavour.

Sexism is not limited to the Open Source Community. Never one to be afraid of tackling new frontiers, previously I was the only woman certified as a Satellite Internet Installer in Canada for the ISP Xplornet/LincSat.  When attending the certification courses or product launches, I was handily dismissed by many of the guys in the room despite my indepth knowledge on TCP/IP layers and networking.  I also experience discrimination from end-users who ask to talk to the `real tech`as they assume I must be in sales or the phone receptionist because I am not a `guy`.  Now, I find that I overcompensate with my technical knowledge in order to break down the initial barriers.

On a closing note, one thing I have come away from this entire scenario with is that it really should not matter what gender you are when working with OSS/FLOSS/IT.  If you are capable it will soon be recognized, even if it takes a bit longer when you have some people's issues to overcome.  I was asked why I felt the need to add 'girl' to my identi/twitter username and on reflection, I did not have a ready answer except that it has alot to do with establishing credibility among my peers.  If my posts are interesting or informative, it is reflected by the number of retweets, favorites or new followers.  It is the same reason I choose to follow or read other's posts.  It's the information sharing, not the gender that matters.