"As an undergraduate engineering student Karen Sandler was used to being the only woman in a class. At the time she didn't want to talk about why there weren't more women in technology, though, believing the attention would only make things worse. That attitude has changed over time, however, as she experienced sexism more directly. At tech conferences, for example, her male colleagues would sometimes ask her whose spouse she was, not knowing that she was actually a speaker at the event. Now as a FOSS attorney and the executive director of the GNOME Foundation, Sandler is taking a different approach by addressing sexism head-on. ... 5 tips for Bringing More Women into Open Source 1. Address women directly. 2. Accept non-students and non-coders. 3. Connect women with mentors. "There's a feeling that women are less likely to ask for help, and find a mailing list intimidating... Mentors respond to newcomers and make them feel welcome," Sandler said. 4. Require a contribution as part of the application. It can be small like fixing a minor bug or rewording a pagraph of documentation. It gives people a head start for joining the community and also gives program administrators a better idea of who is applying and whether they're good. 5. Make sure women don't feel pressure to propose really ambitious projects." -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/200-libby-clark/714599-women-in-fre... Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174