Women & Mozilla

Thanks to Lukas’ great initiative, we’re organizing the first PyStar Paris event ever! The event will take place on June 22nd in the Mozilla Paris office, from 19:00-22:00 CET (though we can stay to network and talk until 23:00 CET)

This is a wonderful occasion to teach women how to program in Python, and will lead to many more future meet-ups. Whether you are beginner or more experienced in Python programming, come and join us for an evening of fun and learning!

Here is some more info about the event:

The PyStar program is a workshop designed to teach all women (including trans women) and their friends who are looking to learn how to program in a friendly non-alpha-geek environment. The material is aimed at learners who have never programmed before though there is also material for those with some programming experience in other languages who are interested in learning a new language. This free event relies on volunteer teachers so we’re looking for people who already know Python, and have an interest in teaching to come guide the attendees as they work on small scripts that teach the power of this very accessible language.

So if you’re in the area and wish to participate, you can sign up here. Feel free to tell your Parisian friends about the event!

We’re also looking for volunteers to teach Python during this workshop (both women and men). If you’re interested, you can sign up on the same page. If you know anyone around you who’d be interested, again feel free to spread the word.

See you all there!

(on a side note, I’ll be participating as well. Can’t wait to learn new things! )

Here are a few links to recent posts and news that concern women in Open Source and computing:

• Mozilla sponsors 2 out of 8 programs in the GNOME Outreach Program for Women this year!
• Blog post featuring a woman’s interesting point of view, when asked the question about being a woman in CS after her speech
• A French post by Julia Buchner, who notices from her own personal experience how positive discrimination in recruitment can be absurd and embarrassing: Diversity in Recruitment [fr]
• Wednesday Geek Woman: a tribute to Mary Cury on the Geek Feminism Blog
• Give your advice on how to make IT careers more attractive to women, starting at K-12 level
• A 10 year old girl’s rant about stereotypes boys can have. It’s really well written, funny and true. A great read
• Stormy Peters writes on how men have helped her throughout her life and carreer in Open Source, and thanks them
• And finally, don’t forget to check out the new WoMoz Planet for posts from women in Mozilla and WoMoz

On Saturday 30th, we (William, Mounir, Anthony, Vivien, over a thousand of Mozilla fans in Dakar, and I) officially gave birth to Mozilla Senegal, and I did a presentation of WoMoz in Dakar. There were girls, but also men, and we discussed together about what could be done in Africa, and more particularly in Senegal.

We agreed that women suffer from misconceptions and discriminations all over the world and that Internet could be a way to help them improving their situations. FLOSS is even better because they have the choice and they can benefit from a great community, they can ask to WoMoz to help them to be more self-confident or to help them in their projects.

In Senegal there are more girls in computer science schools than in Europe: for instance, we did presentations in a school named ESTM where girls represent 40% of the students! There, I’ve met a girl named Yanice: she is a member of the ESTM’s scientific club, and she LOVES Mozilla Firefox! She told me that in Africa, women are considered as equal to men. Mostly, women are even seen as Africa’s driving force and their skills are very respected. So there is no job considered as reserved for men only. If a woman decides to be a computer scientist she’ll earn the same salary! It’s not the same in Europe…

BUT. People often have problems to get access to computers. And when a family is poor, they prefer to keep women at home in order to run the everyday life. So the boys are the ones who are sent to school when women stay at home. Reasons are quite different than in Europe, but the result is the same: women have difficulties to access to FLOSS.

That’s why some people during my presentation have suggested to give lessons in primary schools (when girls are still quite numerous), but also to speak to families in order to demonstrate what FLOSS could bring them, and that belongs to the future. Furthermore, I’ve met a man who works for the UNDP (United Nations Development Program) who told me they have found an easy way to help women to find some time to go to school: for instance, they bring them water so they don’t have to spend time going to the well.

Of course, that was just a first step, a first conversation. But what is important is that now, we have a community in Senegal. The WoMoz family becomes bigger and bigger: we have now more opportunities to share our experiences and to help ourselves.

People I’ve met in Senegal were simply extraordinary, very talented, and I feel very lucky to know they now belong to Mozilla community. So, welcome girls and boys! I hope we’ll see you soon on this blog !

Claire.

Hi!

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a French contributor based in Paris who writes the Bonjour Mozilla blog posts.

I’m in Dakar right now with some other Mozilla folks from the Paris office in order to participate in the birth of Mozilla Senegal! We are doing presentations in schools, leading workshops, and answering a lot of questions.

They’ve asked me to speak about women in Open Source, so I’ll do a WoMoz presentation this Saturday. I can’t wait! It’s very interesting because it seems that there are much more women here in the Open Source community than in Europe. On Saturday 23rd, we went to a Drupal Camp to meet the Open Source community in Dakar. The Dakar Lug told us that they have 17% women in their community! Indeed, there were more women than I have ever seen in such an event. It was great! Furthermore, there were quite a few women developers there. So I’ll try to discover why and how they managed to attract women.

What I can tell you for the moment is that, since we’ve arrived here, we are lucky to meet so many motivated people: they ask us a lot of questions, and they tell us how much they need Mozilla. They also told us that they had the feeling they had been forgotten for a long time, whereas they wanted to be a part of Mozilla. They want an open and “hackable” Internet. They want to participate in this adventure, and they described to us exactly what they need. Some of them also expect to create their society upon Mozilla technologies. They want to improve their future, and they think Mozilla is good for this.

Of course, I’ll give feedback after and write a blog post to let you all know how it went.

Please, if you have some questions, tell me! I’ll try to answer it soon.

Claire.

Quick post to announce that WoMoz now has it’s own Planet, which you can find here:

http://www.womoz.org/planet/

The Planet is still in a beta phase, but it will be evolving quickly with the new design that will take over most of the WoMoz websites.

Stay tuned for more content, design, and news!

A special thanks to Lukas Blakk and Julia Buchner for setting up the planet!