The Ada Initiative, which “supports women in open technology and culture,” is running a fundraising drive. They’re currently about seventeen thousand dollars short of their goal, with four days to go.

I read the reviews for A Natural History of Dragons, and I see a lot of readers mentioning how much it means to them that Isabella is a scientist, and how resonant they find her struggle against the restrictions placed on her gender. As much as I’d like to say that struggle is over today, let’s face it: we as a society aren’t that perfect. Women still face obstacles on that path, and harassment at the end of it; especially in the open-source tech world, there’s a lot of lower-level primate chest-thumping that makes the environment kind of toxic to women (and to men who like the idea of having women in their community). That’s one of several things the Ada Initiative — named for Ada Lovelace, of course — works to counteract.

So if this is the kind of thing that matters to you, and if you can spare a bit of money, please consider donating. There was a matching donation offer from Jacob Kaplan-Moss, up to $5000, but I think we may have burned through that already, or near to it — the meter had more than twenty-five thousand dollars to go when I saw that announcement yesterday. But it’s still true that if you donate $128 (whether in a lump sum or installments), you get this lovely pendant, which is indeed “schwag done right.”

Let’s see if we can’t get them over the finish line.

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/595727.html. Comment here or there.