LFCS: The Outreach Program for Women

At the 2013 Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, GNOME Foundation Executive Director Karen Sandler spoke about bringing more women into open source projects. GNOME has produced measurable results in recent years with its Outreach Program for Women (OPW), which has now expanded to include numerous other free software projects.

Sandler started off by reminding the audience why it is important to talk about the subject of increasing participation from women in open source. If you have not experienced incidents of sexism directly, she said, you are not necessarily aware of what it can be like. She noted that when she herself started out in software development, she did not want to talk about the issue. Instead, she said, she just wanted to concentrate on doing her own work. When she went to law school, however, the percentage of female participants was considerably greater, and once she returned to the free software community, she could not help but notice the distinctly different corporate environment.

At present, 25% of all software developers are women, Sandler said, and 18% of currently graduating computer science students are women, but only 3% of free software developers are women. However, the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program experiences a distinctly higher percentage, 8.3% in 2012, which Sandler said reflects hard work being done on the GSoC team's part. Rather than diving into the motivators and reasons for open source software's low percentages, she said, she wanted to take a practical look at how GNOME has improved its own participation statistics through OPW.

In 2006, GNOME had 181 applicants to its GSoC projects, out of which zero were women. The project realized that it had a real problem, so it launched its Outreach Program For Women, which offers paid internships working with GNOME software projects. The program was "moderately successful" that year, Sandler said, but none of the women who participated as interns stuck around after their internships ended. In 2010, the program was relaunched, with the addition of Marina Zhurakhinskaya, who currently co-leads the program with Sandler.

This incarnation of the program started with an effort to look systematically at all of the reasons why women are not participating in the project. Sandler noted that in "every discussion about women in free software we're always saying 'well, I think the reason why they're not here is because ...'" followed by any one of a handful of reasons. Rather than so assuming the answer (or answers), however, the relaunched program systematically looked at all of the possible barriers to participation, and it tries to address each of them in turn.

The program runs two rounds every year, one concurrent with GSoC, which Sandler said inspired the overall mentoring and internship process (the other round begins in January and runs through April). OPW produces advertising that specifically targets women, which Sandler said produces better results than did more generic marketing materials. In fact, OPW periodically hears from an applicant that she did not know she could apply for GSoC (or thinks that she is underqualified for GSoC), and OPW sometimes helps applicants apply to GSoC instead, especially if the code project in question makes more sense as a GSoC internship.

Successes and moving beyond GNOME

The effort has produced measurable results. Prior to the relaunched OPW, GNOME's GSoC participation garnered zero or one female student each year (or "binary numbers," Sandler quipped), out of the 20 to 30 total GNOME students. But in 2011, seven of GNOME's 27 GSoC participants were women, followed by five of its 29 participants in GSoC 2012. Similarly, 4% of GUADEC attendees in 2009 were women; at GUADEC 2012, 17% of attendees were women.

The program proved successful enough that GNOME decided it should not keep the program a GNOME-only affair. Sandler first reached out to the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), and SFC member project Twisted agreed to run its own internship program in conjunction with OPW's on a test basis. The test went well, so GNOME concluded it that should expand OPW to include as many projects as possible.

The marketing and branding materials were revised to highlight free software in general, and a broader OPW was launched for the January 2013 round, with ten other software projects participating—such as Fedora, Tor, JBoss, Perl, and Mozilla.

How (and why) it works

Sandler attributes the success of OPW to the systematic approach it takes. The outreach addresses women directly, which has been shown to be more effective. It also accepts non-students and non-developers, which has attracted a more diverse set of applicants, and it connects the interns with mentors, which helps participants jump in and ask for help when they otherwise might not.

One of the differences between OPW and other internship programs is that OPW requires applicants to make a contribution (code or otherwise) with their application. Zhurakhinskaya came up with the idea, Sandler said, and it has two beneficial effects. First, not everyone who applies for an internship can be accepted, but helping applicants get connected with a project during the application process allows them to get involved and make contacts. Second, the contribution requirement gives the OPW program managers a far better idea of what the applicant is like than would filling out a form alone.

During the internships, the focus is on encouraging participants to take on manageable tasks that can land during the internship period; it is sometimes tempting to want to take on a large, ambitious contribution, Sandler said, but the downside is that not being able to deliver on such a project is not a positive experience. However, mentors are encouraged to stay in close contact with the interns, and can ramp up the project if the intern is getting things done. Interns are also required to post bi-weekly blog updates on their work, and the interns' posts are aggregated on Planet GNOME, which helps raise the profile of the program.

There is a specific IRC channel for OPW participants, plus regular meetings for interns. GNOME has historically tried to provide travel assistance for GUADEC to the interns, and is now building a specific travel stipend into program. All of these mechanisms help the interns build ongoing relationships with community members, Sandler said, which is important since (as the organizers recognize) building mentoring relationships is the most important aspect of the program. OPW makes a point of encouraging mentors to continue to keep in touch with their interns after the program ends, and of encouraging former interns to stay involved by (among other things) presenting at conferences.

A large number of interns have returned as mentors, Sandler observed, which is one of the best indicators of success. But even those interns who never return to open source software development leave the program with a better understanding of software freedom, the community that produces it, and of its potential to change the world, and they become advocates for the movement.

Similarly, implementing OPW has helped GNOME in ways that extend to participation by men as well as women. The process of finding mentors identifies people who will be good mentors for anyone, the process of identifying smaller tasks for OPW applicants' initial contributions helps the project find good starting points for all newcomers, and so on.

Up next

The next round of OPW internships is slated to begin in June (concurrent with GSoC); most applications are due on May 1, although applications for the kernel internships are due May 8. But there are many other ways to help get more women involved in open source software, Sandler said, such as the Ada Initiative, which runs the AdaCamp unconference for women in open source and open culture projects. The next AdaCamp is planned for June 8 and 9, in San Francisco. AdaCamp is invitation-only, she noted, so it is important to apply as soon as possible.

Some people feel like they must choose to support one initiative or another, Sandler added, but in reality all of the different efforts fit together, and they address different aspects of participation. She encouraged everyone to help out in some way, whether by spreading the word, inviting potential participants to apply, or by persuading your company or free software project to participate as a mentor. Participating in OPW as a mentoring organization requires just two things, she said: funding to pay the stipend for at least one intern, and mentors willing to work with newcomers. Zhurakhinskaya has set a tentative goal of 12% participation from women in GSoC 2013. That may be a little ambitious, Sandler said, but only by setting lofty goals can we get there.