One interesting statistic [LWN.net]

One interesting statistic

Posted Sep 29, 2007 10:03 UTC (Sat) by coriordan (guest, #7544)
In reply to: To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet) by ikm
Parent article: To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

I think the reason this is worth talking about is that, in proprietary software development, the percentage of women is higher than it is in free software development.

This might indicate that we're doing something wrong, in terms of fostering an inclusive (read as: large) contributor base.

For the free software movement, it'd be great if that huge section of society participated more.

Maybe there is a natural reason for the numbers being so low, but maybe there's not. For that much benefit, it's worth looking into the topic.

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One interesting statistic

Posted Oct 1, 2007 12:07 UTC (Mon) by gravious (guest, #7662) [Link] (3 responses)

Rather than indicating that we're doing something wrong it may be simply because women may choose more secure orthodox roles over non-conformist roles. In the sense that the Free Software movement is unorthodox/unknown territory/financially unrewarding/somewhat revolutionary then if the personality traits that cut across gender come into play here then we might see a natural gender imbalance. Also, if what you say is true (is there data?) and the percentage of women is higher in proprietary software than free software then why does it have to be a reflection on the men in free software? Why can it not be a reflection on the choices that women make?

Let's remove the plank from our own eye first.

Posted Oct 2, 2007 17:37 UTC (Tue) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link] (2 responses)

Suppose we write a program that makes some calculation error. Could this be a bug in the compiler or some external library? Yes, but we should suspect our own code first. Only after we're certain that it's correct is it reasonable to consider blaming some other component.

We can't control the choices women make but we can take steps to make our community more welcoming to them. Let's find out what happens if we try.

Let's remove the plank from our own eye first.

Posted Oct 14, 2007 14:28 UTC (Sun) by gravious (guest, #7662) [Link] (1 responses)

Sorry... 12 days later...

Sure, regards taking steps - we should reprogram misogynists and deplore advertising that uses curves to sell wares. But shouldn't we be doing that anyway? (By being empathic sheeple I mean.) Are we suggesting that FOSS nerds/geeks are less mindful of women than the average Joe Bloggs. The thing is, we don't know if this _is_ a bug or calculation error in our code. Having said that I am all for following the "get your own house in order before you go trying to spring-clean others" dictum :)

Let's remove the plank from our own eye first.

Posted Oct 14, 2007 20:06 UTC (Sun) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

Are we suggesting that FOSS nerds/geeks are less mindful of women than the average Joe Bloggs.

Maybe. Unfortunately, we can be pretty sure something is going on with FOSS in particular, because female participation in FOSS is lower than in practically anything else. There are a higher proportion of female *construction workers* -- by reputation, at least, one of the most male-dominated and misogynistic fields out there -- than there are female FOSS contributors (see).