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 writes of 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 Full of Sexist Sows?" - how long would it take for my account to be blocked?
Are you going to gossip and bitch about men during this session?

and down the thread he writes:

I don't find how gender plays any role in a conference. I don't look to "abuse my power" as being from the large majority. I don't share any special sympathy to my colleagues from the male gender.

No, it was not a parody asking if they're going to bitch about men, because I don't see any content possible for such a session, at least not any valuable.

But it was not just men objecting to the session -- or at least its title. Kathleen Murtagh writes:

I strongly dislike the language used in the title of this presentation....

...People of both genders are guilty of gender insensitivity and discrimination. The title of this session being an example.

Drupal already has one of the highest ratio of participating woman than other technical projects. I'd prefer to explore what are we doing right? And how can we harness that better?

That's similar to my own view, at least about the Drupal community, for despite little flareups that have happened over the years — such as the kerfuffle over changing Drupal's help text and labels into gender-neutral language — I've found the Drupal community to be generally welcoming, at least once I got past asking the "dumb" (read: novice) questions and was able to start answering them instead. (Yeah, there are jerks, but they tend to be jerks to everyone and they don't define the atmosphere of Drupal.)

Yet it would be nice to have more women participating.

(Liza subsequently withdrew the proposal, citing the lack of a schedule announcement 3 weeks before the event.)

"Grow a skin!"

How much of the low visibility of women in technology, and open source technology in particular, is due to sexism, sexist attitudes or differences in gender culture?

Just this past Thursday, multiple O'Reilly author Shelley Powers writes about a "Disappointing Turn of Events with the W3C":

Do I indulge in snarky behavior at times, and get angry? Sure, but I'm not the only one. In fact, if we include IRC channels as part of the group's communication, my behavior is positively angelic compared to some other folks. But when I'm taken to task in an official W3C channel not by one guy, not by five guys, but by several, including those who responded directly in emails, then it goes beyond just telling a person to back down—it becomes abusive.

I find it ironic—not— that this happened directly after I posted a note in the HTML WG about the lack of diversity among those making decisions about HTML WG.

Even then, I could probably handle being taken to the wood shed by the men folk, if I weren't also finding myself frozen out of discussions. Not just myself, either, but other women (though I don't want to mention their names without permission, as I'm concerned about repercussions to them.)

Today is the closest I have come to giving up on everything: the Working Group, trying to have any impact on HTML 5, technology, Twitter, this web site, everything.

That's pretty heavy.

Michelle Murrain recently posted some thoughts on "Diversity in Open Source":

As a long time open source user and advocate, even though I am someone who rarely finds people like me in open source projects (i.e other women of color), I’ve always seen the open source movement a potential avenue for the greater involvement of people other than white, straight, young men, because theoretically (this is the important part) one’s involvement in a community is pure meritocracy. But so many open source communities have so far to go when it comes to being welcoming. I’m reminded of sitting in Drupalcon in DC and hearing Dries talk about the “beard length” of the developers. And of course there was the huge brou-ha-ha around a presentation at a recent Ruby conference.

Ah yes, that Ruby conference....

A couple of weeks ago there was a Ruby conference in San Francisco called GoGaRuCo (Golden Gate Ruby Conference). This conference has grabbed attention due to a talk at which the presenter illustrated a discussion of CouchDB by using sexually suggestive pictures of women.

Unsurprisingly the result has been a fair bit of heated, and occasionally offensive, debate.

The main lines of the debate are familiar. Various people, not all women, lay the charge that the images and general tone was offensive. Such material makes women feel degraded and alienated. This kind of presentation would not be tolerated at most professional events.

Defenders of the presenter point out that the slides were humorous and no offense was intended.

(Could it be that this kind of thing happens because open source events are not "professional events"? Is this behavior more prevalent in open source events and communities? I have no idea.)

Sarah Allen blogged about the session.

If he had left it at a few introductory jokes, I would be writing a very different post. Instead the porn references continued with images of scantily-clad women gratuitously splashed across technical diagrams and intro slides. As he got into code snippets, he inserted interstitial images every few slides (removed from the slides below). The first time it happened, he mentioned that he wanted to keep everyone’s attention. It had the reverse effect. This technique was distracting and disrespectful to an audience who, frankly, is turned on by code. This crowd had just watch hour upon hour of code slide shows and live irb sessions, often on the edge of their seats as they absorbed the latest whiz-bang plugin or coding technique from one of the masters.

My point is not whether pornography is good or bad. I personally have no issue with it as long as it is created and viewed by consenting adults. Watching pornography in the privacy of one’s own home or sex club is entirely different from unexpectedly sharing the experience with a couple of hundred Ruby enthusiasts. I imagine that there were many men in the audience who were as uncomfortable as I.

What most pisses me off is that I had to write this blog post, instead of one about Ruby & CouchDB, which is a far more interesting topic.

Sarah Mei blogged about some community reactions to compalints about the porn. Read the comments, too.

Here are the reportedly cleaned and scrubbed slides:

At a Flash conference, another presenter did something similar. Apparently adolescent sexual fantasies make tech so much more fun.

Who's code?

Orange Labs San Francisco has put out a study, "Her Code: Engendering Change in Silicon Valley" [PDF] that found:

• 2% of open source software developers are female
• 1/4 of proprietary software developers are female
• 11.8% of Computer Science bachelor's degrees are awarded to women
• 8.5% of Silicon Valley boards of directors have women
• Only 3% of venture capital-backed companies are run by women

The report explores many potential causes and exacerbating factors, including education, media coverage of technology, and cultural factors. Their conclusions regarding the media were especially damning:

The press lags behind the reality, relegating its scanty coverage of female executives to 'women's issues' or just simply ignoring them when it comes time to ask about "challenges".

We've seen that many times in newspapers. Next time you see an article about a woman or women working in technology, check what section the article is in. Lifestyle? Fashion? Why not in the Technology section? (Or Business section, as appropriate?) Is this an honest reflection of real life? Is such pidgeonholing and stereotyping truly "fit to print"?

The report also looks at generational differences, and points to some outstanding women who've succeeded in technology and tech business.

Orange put out some video associated with the report:

Some women are succeeding. What's the secret? What makes the difference?

For my own part, I don't know what the answer is to get more women to join open source endeavors. To a large extent, I see that by the time one is working at a high technical and professional level, the low participation of women in open source seems to be self-selective. In three years of hiring, I don't think 5% of our developer applicants were women. In fact, I can count all the women developers I've interviewed on one hand. Here we are, well into our fifth year of business, and only this week we hired our first woman developer.

So why do women opt out? Is it that women never really see the open source communities as opportunities, career, educational, personal or otherwise? I don't know, but as low as the 25% figure is for women developers in proprietary software, finding only 1/10th of that percentage in open source points to something other than just education.

Women are either not seeing or are not interested in participating in open source communities. Setting aside the question of "why" for a moment, how can we change that?

So how do we get more women into the development ranks? Or even just participating in the open source communities in general?

This weekend, at DrupalCamp LA, a panel organized by Rain Braew on the subject takes it on. [I was supposed to take part, but business priorities forced me to cancel, much to my disappointment.] "Women of Drupal Please Stand Up: a panel featuring exceptional women in drupal discussing how to encourage more public participation from women" (which indeed is the title) takes on the issue from what is a positive proactive perspective.

Jenna McWilliams picks up on something Kirrily says:

Find potential users of the application and teach them programming, instead of recruiting good programmers and teaching them about the value of the application. She says:

If you’re working on a desktop app, recruit desktop users. If you’re writing a music sharing toolkit, recruit music lovers. Don’t worry about their programming skills. You can teach programming; you can’t teach passion or diversity.

I'm not sure I agree with that. I feel that a lot of the attitudes that might be considered insensitive or blind to diversity are simply the results of unexamined, unthought-through assumptions, habits and worldviews held without any particular malice. And some of the resistance we see to even discussing it I think comes more out of general stubbornness — a belief that if a guy accedes to a woman's complaints, he's somehow "backing down" and admitting he was doing something wrong.

Code is specific, and therefore relatively easy to correct. Attitudes are fuzzy, subjective, laden with baggage, and changing them can be harder. But not impossible.

Who's stopping you?

Angie Byron, aka "webchick," who started out in the Drupal community years ago as a complete n00b and now is Drupal 7 project maintainer, leading the effort (or herding cats, as she sometimes describes it), lays out her advice to women in a comment on her own blog post on the topic early in July.

My suggestion there would be to spend your time while you wait for your own questions to be answered, answering other people's questions on the forums and IRC. Sounds unintuitive, I know. You might feel like you don't know enough to answer anyone's questions. But here's the thing -- if you can get Drupal installed, you already know more than someone else. So make a game of it. See if you can find a question you know the answer to. If not, try and find a question you could possibly figure out with a little trial and error. This will have a number of positive consequences:

1. By answering other peoples' questions, you'll rapidly becomes much more adept at Drupal because you'll cement in the knowledge you already know, and expose yourself to new knowledge that you didn't already know.
2. Your name will start to stick out from the crowd as one of that 0.05% who is helping the project. This means that someone is far more likely to answer your questions, and be much happier about it when they do.
3. You help make the Drupal.org forums a nicer place. That'll make more people hang out there, some of which may be able to answer your questions! :)
4. If your business is related to Drupal, or you do freelancer work, being a constant knowledgeable and helpful presence in the forums is a great method for sending clients your way.

So don't give up. :) The Drupal community really is a great place to be. It just can take a bit to kind of find your way.

Ultimately, open source is a do-ocracy: Those who do end up not just doing but even deciding.

Get involved. Get engaged in the community, the process. If someone gives you guff, ignore him (or her). Go around him (or her). Ultimately the community is open. Nobody can stop you, except yourself.

What about the guys? I don't know if there's any redeeming the fans of porn in tech or the chest-thumping defenders of sexism and privilege.

But most guys are not those guys.

Martin Fowler offers what I feel is sage advice for all of us, not just guys:

At this point there's an important principle. I can't choose whether someone is offended by my actions. I can choose whether I care.

BlogHer Tech & Web Contributing Editor Laura Scott is Co-Founder, President and Creative Director of pingVision, an open source interactive design and development company. She blogs there, and at rare pattern. Her personal website is laurascottdotnet (launching soon).