Group: Women's Caucus/FAQ
What is your ultimate goal?
- Mission statement
- Manifesto?
Isn't this also discrimination?
“The reason racism is a feminist issue is easily explained by the inherent definition of feminism. Feminism is the political theory and practice to free all women: women of color, working-class women, poor women, physically challenged women, lesbians, old women –as well as white economically privileged heterosexual women. Anything less than this is not feminism, but merely female self-aggrandizement.” –Barbara Smith, 1979
Girls
The biggest opportunity for humanity, for feminism, and for Free Software and content right now is the One Laptop Per Child/Sugar Labs alliance, which aims at getting up to a billion children (obviously including up to half a billion girls) a real education (using Free Sugar education software) and a shot at real jobs in a real economy. Much evidence shows that success is the best antidote to oppression, racism, sexism, and so on. In addition, much of the UN Millennium Development Goals global campaign against dire poverty depends critically on educating and empowering girls. Among the issues where girls and women would have the dominant influence (if enabled and permitted) are health, education, savings, and family planning.
Netbook computers like the OLPC XO now cost significantly less than printed textbooks except in countries so poor that they have not provided adequate textbooks to their schoolchildren. Free e-learning materials are coming out in ever-growing profusion. They will allow teachers and students to engage in continuous improvement of the materials for the benefit of all other students. In particular, it will allow girls and women to add and correct topics of vital interest to them and their families.
It should be a no-brainer to thus improve education while saving money, but it is suspected that there are people with less than no brains involved in the decision making.
"In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards."
— Mark Twain, Following the Equator; Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
"The definitions weren't accurate. Everything was a little bit ambiguous—they weren't smart enough to understand what was meant by 'rigor.' They were faking it. They were teaching something they didn't understand, and which was, in fact, useless, at that time, for the child."
"Choosing books by their covers", in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, by Richard Feynman
References
- (Flamewar for inspiration) http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/difqn/advancing_women_in_free_software_join_us_for_our/
