On 07/04/2022 09:37, Andrey Semashev via Boost wrote:
On 4/7/22 09:54, Kostas Savvidis via Boost wrote:
On Apr 4, 2022, at 20:43, Vinnie Falco via Boost
wrote:
the declining level of activity on the Boost mailing lists and the declining level of participation in the Boost formal review process. Both in terms of the number of reviewers, and in terms of the difficulty in finding a review manager.
One way forward might be involving more women. Now and again, a woman posts a patch or a comment but the core participants are all men. The Foundation's board is also all male. Google Code also seems to attract an all-male crowd.
Women, in particular, are excellent at active networking and will in time involve yet other women (and men).
How to do it? Next time there is a review, cold-call a colleague or a mailing list participant.
Gender has no bearing in Boost community, and I would very much like it to stay this way. If you're good at C++, if you have interesting ideas, if you make useful libraries - you are welcome, regardless of gender, race or nationality.
There seems to be about a 5-10% stable population proportion of women over time, very similar proportion to Physics. Many years ago - maybe ten now? - I did an informal survey at a conference of what puts women off a career in C++. What I say next is as reliable as that would mean, plus with a decade of memory corruption. It's not the technical complexity - actually, that was rated usually as a positive. It's not toxic masculinity - a few mentioned the C++ male dominated ecosystem is marginally better than wider society. It's not outright discrimination, it was mentioned a few misoygnists exist anywhere you go, and C++ was neither better nor worse in that regard than elsewhere. However there was a perception of there being a glass ceiling in terms of promotion into technical specialisation, and much less so into managerial specialisation. Many commented that they were sure they didn't get pay rises anything like as much as men, and that was offputting. From what I gathered at the time, the overwhelming feedback was that it the lack of flexibility shown by employers that put women off. C++ employers want people for at least 40 hours per week. They are usually flexible about when, but not about how much. I heard several horror stories of employer mistreatment and intransigence, admittedly they were all US based, I can't imagine any of that being legal in the EU. I'm sympathetic to that observation. Yesterday morning I had a sick one year old to look after while my wife slept. You don't get much high quality C++ written when there is a one year old actively trying to choke themselves, pull things down onto themselves, and trying to push the power button on your computer. I wasn't able to say "my child is sick, there is nobody else to look after them, so I need to take half a day at very short notice". Even in the EU, there is no legal obligation on employers to provide that right, and the EU is probably the most worker friendly large region anywhere in the world. Re: Foundation/Conferences/WG21 I can absolutely assure you that every effort is made to ensure as diverse a board membership as possible, but there are very few women to choose from, and when asked to serve many say they can't commit the time (which is the case for most approached whether male or female). So if a board ends up all male, it's because there wasn't much alternative. I know for a fact that that lack of diversity bothers everybody involved. In any case, I agree with Andrey, I don't want to know anything about a C++ contributor other than the C++ they have to show me. I also think that if employers were actually serious about improving diversity, they could easily do so, but continue to proactively choose to keep the current situation the way it is. We in open source have very little power over the economics here because we don't have the power to hire and fire, and we have no control over the money. We are takers here, not setters. All that said, god speed on improving the situation. Niall