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Today the United States Supreme Court adds a woman Justice. In all the history of the country, Sonia Sotomayor is only the third woman to sit on the bench. This is a big deal. Very high barrier to entry. Heavy politics involved. Media frenzy. The Open Source software world is the opposite environment. Low barrier to entry. Petty small-time people politics at worst. Virtually no media attention, even if we want it. But sometimes, sometimes, it seems just as difficult to get women involved in Open Source software development as to get a woman named to the Supreme Court. —More so, if you consider that women comprise 22% of the Supreme Court, but only 1.5% or so of Open Source software projects. "Where are all the women bloggers?" was the question that led to the launch of BlogHer by Lisa, Elisa and Jory. There's no question now where all the women bloggers are. But the question persists in open source tech (and tech in general). Where are all the women in tech? Where are all the women in tech conferences? Where are all the women in open source tech (conferences and otherwise)?These questions have not gone away. Is it cultural? Is it economics? Is it sexism? Maybe a bit of each, and some other things?
"Find the women — er, woman"
This subject has become "timely" (as in "worth" talking about) because of Kirrily Robert's keynote at OSCON. She stirred it up. Shelley Powers writes:
One very interesting graphic in the presentation shows that 80% of women in open source noticed sexism or gender discrimination, compared to only 20% of men who noticed. This pretty much backs up what I've found every time I've pointed out diversity problems: all of the guys tell me how wrong I am.
BlogHer CE Liz Henry writesof the discussions she encountered at OSCON:
For me, one of the more depressing things that happens in this field is when women with about 100 times the status and skill level I have end up giving the (private) advice that while they agree with all this and still feel it, they think it is bad for one's career to mention sexism or feminism ever. In this case, hurrah, that just didn't happen (at least that I'm aware of.) However, I think it's still the case that the vast majority of women I know in my field do feel the effects of misogyny and sexism and are often enraged by it in ways difficult to express. I would like to go further out on a limb here and say that the intersections of geek fandom culture and open source/tech people combined with the ongoing discussions of race, class, gender etc, like Racefail '09 for example, have upped the level of awareness and of discourse and have really changed some people's perspectives.
For other reactions, put on your mudders before wading into the comments of another ilk here. Reacting to the backlash to her OSCON keynote, Kirrily felt she had to do some "debunking,"such as:
Here are some examples of widely-used open source software:
- Ubuntu – desktop linux distribution
- GIMP – graphic design application
- Wordpress – blogging platform
- Adium – IM client
- Firefox – web browser
- Joomla – content management system
- Moodle – online education platform
Each of these projects is in an area that either has a majority of women participating (blogging, IM, graphic design), or an equal or nearly equal number as men (desktop computing, education, web browsing), at least in western countries. And yet they do not have proportional representation of women in their development teams. It is not (solely) the female-friendliness of the underlying application that leads to women joining an open source project. If it were, the above projects would have a high level of female participation.
For DrupalCon Paris 2009, happening first week of September, Liza Kindred proposed a panel provocatively titled, "Is Drupal Full of Sexist Pigs?" Some of the comments on that session proposal are what you might expect: tierecke writes:
I don't like the idea this session. I wish there was a way to vote a session down. I wish there were more women interested in Drupal or CMS or programming or computers. I would definitely be happy if more women would come to DrupalCon. But there are much more men interested in it than women. Can I attend the session or is it open to women only? If someone would suggest a session named "Is Drupal
