Fri, 07 Oct 2011
Inspired by Emily Clough
Emily Clough asks sharp questions.
Academically speaking, Emily is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Government at Harvard. She studies comparative politics and the political economy of development with a special research focus on private governance and child labor. But this is a personal story, written to celebrate Ada Lovelace Day.
In 2007, I had just graduated from college and was working for Creative Commons as a programmer. I was awed by my sudden position near the center of a whirlwhind of copyright activism; at the same time, I wondered about what kind of impact the free culture movement was making. Were we really empowering people? How many? Which ones?
For Thanksgiving Day 2007, I was planning to be on a flight to New Delhi to visit some family. The night before, I stayed up all night chatting with Abhay, expecting to sleep on the plane. When I got to the airport, I discovered I didn't have a visa for India in my passport. Groggy and confused, I managed to visit the consulate and get a new visa.
So on Thanksgiving evening, a day usually filled with family and feasts, I had no plans. I explained this to my roommate Matt Baggott, and he invited me to a vegan Thanksgiving dinner hosted by his friend Nori Heikkinen. That was where I met Emily Clough.
Emily was interested in international development, and I told her about the activity I was making to teach kids about Creative Commons. This was November 2007, and like much of the tech world, I was excited about One Laptop Per Child. OLPC was creating inexpensive, highly-interactive learning computers to distribute to children all over the developing world. They would have free software on them, which kids could edit, and my activity was going to maybe ship with them.
Emily, ever thoughtfully critical, wondered about the possibility of gender bias.
Emily: "How are they identifying which children get computers?"
Asheesh: "I think they ask schools to go through their rosters and ask for that many computers."
Emily: "Don't you think that under-privileges girls?"
Asheesh: "I don't see why it would."
Emily: "It's an empirical question. Girls are under-represented on school rosters in much of the developing world."
Huh, I thought.
Emily's remark taught me that the effects of sexism can be magnified if we act unaware of it.
Nowadays, I work on growing the free software community. What I want is user empowerment.
I spend much of that time organizing events to address gender diversity issues in free software. When growing the free software community, it's not enough to find more contributors; we have to make sure we're reaching people of all kinds. Gender is one place where there's still work to be done.
