Evidence: Outreachy & Debian favoritism, women who missed out
In the last few years, there has been a lot of discussion about favoritism in Debian and Outreachy. Evidence already shows widespread rule breaking. Nonetheless, favoritism is often spoken about in abstract terms. There is an unfair focus on the woman or beneficiary, there is a lot less focus on the male decision makers and there is often no acknowledgment of the women who missed out.
This blog aims to complete that information gap. By looking at some incredibly talented women who Outreachy & Debian rejected, we can see how wrong it was in 2019.
One of my first Outreachy applicants, back in the days when the program was called Outreach Program for Women, was Juliana Louback from Brazil. Outreachy rejected her. The same woman was selected for an internship at the IBM Watson lab, a scholarship to Columbia University and eventually employment at Google. Fortunately, after her Outreachy application was rejected, Juliana came back to Debian a few months later and we selected her for Google Summer of Code. She worked on JSCommunicator.
Two candidates were selected to do translation work, not actual development. One of the chosen Outreachy candidates from 2013 was subject of a discussion on debian-private about meeting for beer. This woman didn't ask for this attention. Did other candidates waste their time in the application process?
There was a lot of controversy about the women applying for things from Albania. People have shared photos of them all wearing the same red t-shirts. There is speculation that some, maybe all of them, were paid to attend the conference and make it look bigger. Izabela is the woman sitting in the back of this photo from 2016...
Follow up:
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In defence of Albanian women: Outreachy & Debian favoritism scandal
In my last blog, I looked at the way some extraordinary women were excluded from Outreachy & Debian internships.
Many people simply assumed that there was only one explanation for the Albanian woman dining with the Debian leader, Chris Lamb, two months before the award of Outreachy internships.
Both men and women look at the DebConf19 photos and reach the same conclusion. People assume it is simply an inappropriate romance. In fact, they may all be wrong.
There are at least two other explanations.