Discussing the Balance
2009-08-30 – 13:45I accumulated a few links this summer about gender equity in computing, particularly in open source. The two that bear re-reading are:
- Robert Kaye reports on Kirrily Robert’s OSCON keynote “Standing Out in the Crowd“. Five years after Michelle Levesque and I looked at gender ratios in open source, the average is still only 1.5% female (though some projects, like Drupal, have reached the same 15-20% as the industry as a whole). Most of the talk was upbeat, though, as some people are working hard to address the problem.
- Maggie Fox’s “Oi! Are we invisible or something?” makes some of the same points, and offers a checklist of things conference organizers can do to help.
2 Responses to “Discussing the Balance”
Just a factual correction: there are no “mainstream” open source projects that have reached the 15-20% female representation point. Drupal runs around 10% based on total community members, and is the best I know of; that number includes people who do not contribute code, however, so it doesn’t compare directly to the 1.5% from FLOSSPOLS.
There are two new projects which have > 75% female participation based on code contribution: Dreamwidth and AO3. Both are discussed in my talk.
By Kirrily Robert on Aug 31, 2009
Hey, thanks for the link and continuing the discussion!
By maggiefox on Aug 31, 2009