First, this is not another “How To Pickup Women” for programmers. Over the weekend however, several people started talking about women in the PHP community and the scarcity of this resource.

First up is our own “roving reporter” Ligaya Turmelle. Lig (as she is known to those of us who hang in the #phpc channel on freenet.net) writes a very brief post titled: All the women in the house – stand up. Lig’s post is more of just a roll-call for women in the community. If you are one, drop by her blog and raise your hand.

Next up, Elizabeth Narimore, one of the organizers of PHP Appalachia and the author of In Case You Missed It over at phpbuilder.com wrote a post on her journal titled Where are our PHP Sisters?. Elizabeth, another regular in #phpc, goes a step further and wants makes a call for organization. She gives her contact info and asks her sisters in PHP to drop her a line if you are interested in getting together. (In a virtual sense)

To round things out, we hear from a member of the other gender, Ben Ramsey. Ben, not surprisingly a regular in #phpc, posts on his blog PHP Women. He starts out by making it all about him; pointing out that he has seven women on his blogroll. From there however, he goes on to make the point that he feels women are underrepresented in the PHP community and is using the power of his blog (even though he points out that he, himself is not a women) to bring this issue to the light of day. He points to Lig and Elizabeth’s blogs for more information but since his is the longest, I’ll steal a quote from him.

Tonight, during a conversation on IRC, my good friends Ligaya Turmelle and Elizabeth Naramore resolved to change this by announcing a call for the creation of a women’s group for PHP programmers. Now, I’m not a woman, but I’m blogging about this because I think this is an important opportunity for the PHP community to reach out to the female programmers of the world and make them feel included in what has largely been a man’s industry.

So the call has gone out. If you are a female PHP developer head on over to Lig and Elizabeth’s blog and let your voice be heard. If you know of sister programmers, make sure you point them in the right direction.

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