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Tackling Open Source's Gender Issues

Posted by Soulskill on from the bringing-balance-to-the-force dept.

angry tapir writes "Women's participation in open source development is at a far lower level than women's participation in proprietary software development. One of the groups that aims to change this is the Ada Initiative: A non-profit organization formed last year. I recently caught up with its two founders, Linux kernel developer Valerie Aurora and comp sci PhD student Mary Gardiner, to discuss the project."

9 of 589 comments (clear)

  1. Community resistance by bonch · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The reasons for the lack of female participation in open source are a touchy subject, and I probably risk offending some folks, but the fact is that the movement is largely made up of male computer nerds with few social skills and little female contact. My guess is that women fare better in proprietary software development because it implies a level of professionalism, since if you can't interact well socially with co-workers, you usually don't work there anymore.

    Richard Stallman made some infamous remarks at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit about "EMAC virgins", explicitly defining them as women who needed to be "relieved" of their EMACS virginity as a "holy duty." RMS defended it as a parody of religion, missing the point that the complaints were about the sexism and not the religious satire (RMS also believes in legalizing pedophilia and possession of child pornography--probably not the most palatable spokesperson to get behind in the first place).

    If you're a man who rarely hangs out with women, it's easy to forget what it's like for the other side, especially if they're in a field in which they're practically outsiders. Women didn't take too kindly to being singled out like that at a tech conference. The bigger problem is the backlash from male techies that always flares up when this issue is discussed, which was amplified in the case of RMS because his core supporters tend to be so rabid.

    I'm subscribed to the Cocoa-dev mailing list, and one of the regular members there began submitting messages under her real name, revealing that she had previously been posting under a male name because they found that they got more direct responses and less obnoxious comments. And this is Apple platform development, where you might assume the more liberal elements of that particular demographic would lend itself to increased tolerance.

    I really can't imagine what it must be like to be a female developer and hope some of them voice their opinions here.

    1. Re:Community resistance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Tell a woman you're a computer programmer, and her eyes glaze over.

      You're talking to the wrong women. I've met many women who are quite excited by technical talk from intelligent, educated men. I've dated a few of them, and married one of them.

      Tell her you like playing computer games, and she leaves.

      Well, yes, that can be a big red flag. Most women are looking for a mature adult, not an overgrown child. If you can demonstrate that you are definitively the former, despite still playing games, then she will likely overlook that trait. But if you're like most gaming nerds, who tend to be useless children in grown-up bodies, then yes, she will walk away.

    2. Re:Community resistance by Darinbob · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This varies a lot. Most of my jobs in the past have had some amount of women engineers, higher in some lower in others. And definitely I can say that the lower the number of women the more rude the behavior from the men. But when there are more women then men tend to behave better however I rarely saw any pushback; no one complained that they were being stifled by having to use mature language (ie, not swearing) or being quieter when telling the latest joke. And I have never seen any woman in engineering pretending to be one of the guys or acting bitchy (that's more a stereotype in upper management).

      I would put a lot of blame on management when these problems come up though. Just don't let the team act like frat boys, keep the competition in check, etc, even if there are no females around.

      If anything I would expect the corporate world to be worse, because in open source you never need to see the other person and they don't know anything about you in return. Face-to-face meetings in open source are relatively rare.

    3. Re:Community resistance by Shinobi · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Trust me, female-dominated professions are just as bad when it comes to sexism. The nurse profession for example. As a male, it's ok to be a paramedic, or a doctor. But if you even start studying to become a nurse, you're told from the get go that your only purpose as a male is to do the heavy lifts, you get marked down on exams, essays etc merely for being male. As a male, you can be top of your class in actual knowledge, with years of practical experience from warzones, traffic accidents etc, the woman who's afraid of needles, faints at the sight of blood etc will still get a higher grade, and be hired before you when you go looking for a job as a nurse.

      Hence, many men drop out of nurse school and study to become doctors instead, which has lead to a rather hilarious policy which has even been used in official proclamations here in Sweden... It goes like this: A study finds that female nurses are heavily overrepresented when it comes to back injuries, due to heavy lifting. As a result of the physical requirements, more men need to be hired for those wards. Meanwhile, female nurses are heavily encouraged to train as lab nurses etc...

      I only took those courses for 6 months, then I left, RIGHT before the would-be nurse afraid of needles and blood phobia could leech off of me in the group project where she had been assigned to me by the teacher, without me having any say whatsoever.

      Institutional sexism is not limited to men. Women do it just as much.

      I had been planning on switching profession from developer to nurse or similar, but I cancelled those plans. I still remain a volunteer paramedic.

  2. Self Selection From Life Realities by alexhmit01 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A project carrying an "open source" or "free software" license is not necessarily an "open source" project. Plenty of "Cathedral" projects with paid developers with an open source license that may (or may not) get downstream patches kicked up. Those projects are going to look like any other corporate development group. These are really the core projects.

    The "open source projects" of people hacking code make up the bulk of developers in open source, and is the hobbyist developers. People that have a lot of time to devote to a hobby are either single, or older empty nesters. Men can hang out in the single realm and start a family @ 40, women cannot. This limits women from engaging in serious time commitments like open source projects.

    The pool of women available to do this is pretty small.

    That's without dealing with the fact that women tend to have tighter deviations from the norm in various areas, which means that any group that is selected from extreme outliers is going to be disproportionately male. This is true whether you are selecting politicians that reach Federal office, people that are extremely interested in programming to pursue as a hobby, moving to America as a day laboring immigrant, or criminally oriented men to form a gang. The outliers are predominately (but not exclusively) male.

    In local politics, where the time commitment is NOT as extreme and the skill set needed to be elected is NOT that extreme, we have a pretty good mix of men and women on city counsels, school boards, mayoral seats, etc. Not 50-50, but a pretty good representation. We have plenty of female mayors, but we've NEVER had a female governor. Outliers in general are predominately male.

  3. Some thoughts by quantaman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    1. A lot of the creepy sexist behaviour in the open source community is more a result of the lack or women rather than the cause.

    2. There seems to be a subset of communities, new atheism, rationality groups, loud political activism, that seem to have a mixture of exclusivity and deliberately being an outsider. For whatever reason (culture or biology) these tend to be massively male dominated. The Open Source movement feels like it belongs in this group.

    3. Combining 2 with programmings pre-existing male dominance and you get a very skewed gender distribution.

    I have no idea how to fix things, but that's my perspective on some of the causes of the issue.

    --
    I stole this Sig
  4. Re:This again? by Hatta · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I see no reason to think there's a gender-related basis for programming... do you?

    Given the physical differences between male and female brains, I see no reason not to think that there's a gender related basis for programming.

    "Differences in interest" sounds like a nice way of saying "girls like dolls, boys like guns." There is no particular biological basis for this

    But, there is. Raise a biologically male child to play with dolls and he'll make them fight. Raise a biologically female child to play with action figures, and she'll play house with them.

    This experiment has been done, and the results are in. Male psychology is different from female psychology for reasons that are unrelated to nurture. That leaves nature. The fact that we haven't pinpointed the exact brain structures that cause the difference is only due to our lack of understanding of the brain at this time.

    Or, to put this another way... what you are claiming here is equivalent to claiming that transexuals have a choice.

    --
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  5. Re:Good luck with that by ortholattice · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yet if you give her a choice between a pink shirt and a blue shirt she will pick pink.

    That is due to stereotypes she was exposed to, not to something inherent in girls.

    A century ago, pink was a "boys'" color. From 1918 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink#In_gender ): "The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl."

  6. Re:Okay this may get me modded down to infinity, b by Grishnakh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Its like a study i read not too long ago (it was in a mag, sorry as i have NO clue which one) that had the results of a study that showed women's taste in men changed based on whether or not they were on birth control or had the ability to have children. those that couldn't have children or were on birth control favored softer, gentler "teddy bear" or pretty boy types, those that were fertile and not on birth control favored the rougher, more masculine "bad boy" types.

    You left out the worst (but true) conclusions from this study: a given woman will frequently change her taste in men depending on where she is in her monthly cycle. So she'll marry a "teddy bear" guy who makes a good living and can provide well for her children, but then when she's ovulating, she'll cheat on him with one of the "bad boy" men and get pregnant, and pass off the kid as his.

    This is extremely common, and some studies have found that something like 15% of people do not have the biological father they thought they had.

    Very similar behavior is seen in many animals. So basically, women aren't any better than animals.