[Pan-users] Re: updated info - O.T.

[Petr Kovar]

Alan Meyer, Thu, 5 Aug 2010 15:28:11 -0700 (PDT):

(...)

> The open source world tends to be very technology intensive,
> often with those other roles that are common in the broader
> information systems world, completely missing.

Exactly, and I think it's often harmful for open source communities and
disadvantageous for open source projects.

(...)

> I'm curious to hear your opinion on whether it took a lot of
> "pushing" to get women into science and technology, or whether it
> was more of a "liberating" to enable their entrance into roles
> that they really wanted to get into but were inhibited from doing
> so in the past by male dominance and social convention.

It depends on one's perspective, I guess. For many women deeply interested
in higher education in science and technology, the prior society
certainly didn't make it easier to study and work in a field of
choice. And usually, as you wrote, it was merely discouraged and quite
impossible. We could call it unjust and even oppressive, yes.

Then, there was the obvious portion of Communist propaganda, which depicted
modern & deserved women as crane operators in construction industry, or
tractor drivers in agricultural industry. All that went hand in hand with
establishing a subtle system of pre-school education for children with both
parents in work and with no time for caring for their children.

One might ask whether the new system was respectful to values of
(traditional) family institution.

Surely, a driving force behind these changes was completely different in
the Eastern bloc when compared to the U.S. In the East, the people in a
collectivist system including women were expected to self-sacrifice for the
well-being of the whole socialist society, whether in the West, the
personal success in an individualist system was what mattered, I assume.

(...)

> Perhaps so in the Czech Republic, however in the United States I
> would say that disrespect for religion is every bit as condemned
> as disrespect for women.  For example, I can think of only one
> fringe politician (Jesse Ventura), and only a few fringe media
> people (e.g., Bill Maher), who have dared to say anything even
> mildly disrespectful about any religion.

Well, the political culture in my country is nowhere near as decent as in
the U.S., no doubt about that. And it naturally applies to the former
Eastern bloc in general. 

But then again, let's look back at the FLOSS community and compare the
number of reactions advocating women with the number of ones advocating
Catholics or religion. That disproportion is quite flagrant.

> I'm not a religious believer myself, but I've learned to be
> extremely cautious about making any criticism of any religion 
> except to people I know very well.
> 
> 
> Incidentally, and even further off-topic, I wish I could speak or
> just read and write *any* foreign (to me) language as well as you
> do with English.  I would never know from your posting that you
> were not a native English speaker, and a well educated one at
> that.

Thank you for your kind words! I still think, though, that my English
skills are quite limited in terms of phraseology & idioms. But I'm working
on it! :-)

Best,
Petr Kovar