Women in the Open Source/Free Software Communities?

MikeA asks: "We know what men have done in the community and it seems that all the 'big names' are men. Are there any female kernel hackers out there? Are there any major projects run by women or that have women as developers? Are there even many women using Linux? If not, why not? How do we attract more women to these development projects? We are missing out on a large user base and development resource if women aren't interested. " I agree, so I thought it would be nice to take the time to discuss what what the women have done for the community. What accomplishments they've made, the types of projects they get involved in, and any hopes they have for the future.

Comments

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh. Open source is about letting people do whatever they want with the source code. It's about freedom. If hardly any women want to use it, that's their choice. Doing nothing, absolutely nothing, with open source is also allowed. Anyone who's followed the gender wars knows that open source is everything feminists claim that women want. The organizations are non-hierarchical and base their decisions largely on consensus. The demands to make a profit, beat a competitor, and win contracts are virtually non-existent. It's open, inviting, and totally inclusive. Maybe women are just love corporate scheming and nasty power games more than they let on.

Re:Who cares?

[jflynn]

If I thought that the ratio was due soley to lack of interest I wouldn't worry either.

However, all too often when this subject comes up on slashdot the conversation turns to dating, sex, and marriage. This is not the reason that women should participate in open source, to solve the lonely male geek problem.

It is tough to stand out in any crowd, and given the current situation, that is what happens to women who are brave enough to try. If male programmers could treat female programmers more like they do their male colleagues, *when appropriate*, I believe it would be more comfortable for those brave souls. This is not to say that compatible people should not seek each other's company, but let's try not to alienate women in the process.

One obnoxious claim I see repeated time after time seems to say that if *I* can't find an attractive female geek, they all must be ugly. First, even if it *were* true, so what? I never saw beauty as requirement for geekdom, and good thing -- or most of us would be in trouble! Second, accept responsibility for your own limitations, don't try to blame women for them.

This may even be harmful to open source. I have to wonder how much of the religious flame wars are testosterone based. My OS/toolkit/license is bigger than yours!

There is something wrong with any movement devoted to free choice that excludes half of the population, whether intentionally or not.

The Greatest Female Geek . . .

[Gallowglass]

. . . was, of course, Admiral Grace Hopper, oldest serving officer (of *either* sex) in the US Navy, project leader of the team that built the first commercial general purpose language, and a Righteous Babe.

"Don't ask for permission. Just do it! It's easier to apologize for having done something than it is to get permission to do it." - G. Hopper

Which is why OpenSource development works so well when you come to think of it.

Re:Not to be rude...

[Anonymous Shepherd]

Why do people say that when they're about to be rude?

Regardless, learning linux is a big step. It's adoption of the standard. And from that point, one can easily fall into the trap of accomplishing much more.

Considering that I believe there is a tremendous gender gap in computing, it's a good thing(even if not a great thing) that there is a site for women and Linux. What else needs to be done is to introduce women to computing in general as well, rather than leaving it a man's market and the domain of the arcane, mystic, and powerful.


-AS

Here it is again...

[Ledge Kindred]

This question seems to come up with surprising regularity. You'd think someone would just put up a "why aren't there more women in computing?" webste.

There are probably many factors involved, including but not limited to:

1) Cultural -- the US is a major factor in computing and the US is still a society that for the most part expects boys to play with screwdrivers and footballs and automobile engines (and therefore become engineers of some sort) and girls to play with dolls and play kitchen sets and games like "Let's go to the Mall" (and therefore become homemakers and housewives.)

2) Environmental -- CompSci is a science/engineering discipline. Engineering and science are still dramatically male-dominated. Anyone who wants to believe otherwise, fine, but try to find a female professor in any science/engineering dscipline, or better yet, try to become a female professor. Females certainly aren't encouraged to become CompSci majors, and are probably discouraged in many cases.

3) Situational -- I'm sure plenty of women are scared away from computers the first time they show up at a user's group meeting or similar get-together, log into IRC and start chatting, send EMail, post on /. or any other method of socializing whereby it becomes known that they are female. They will, in the vast majority of situations, then become blidingly aware of the huge population of sexually frustrated, poorly socialzed computer geeks out there who will then proceed to come on to, try to "Hot chat", send gross EMail, and so on and so forth. (Yes, I know, you don't do that, but lots of computer geek guys do.) Unlike men, who, since they are the vast majority can have opportunities for big group-bonding geek-outs, it's not as easy for a group of hacker girls to get together in large groups because there really aren't large groups of them. IMHO, being a computer geek is in some part the social fabric of which you become part and if you can't neatly fit into that social fabric, you're not going to be as likely to stick around.

Yadda yadda yadda. Isn't there a FAQ with this info someplace yet?

And, semi-off-topic, I really get annoyed with women who call themselves "grrls" or something similar like that. I find it just as annoying as 31337 5p33k.

-=-=-=-=-

Does it really matter?

[Jordy]

Just to play the devil's advocate for a bit...

Does it really matter if any women are in the open source developer community? Does it matter if Linux was created by a man rather than a woman? Would some massive economic, social and spiritual change happen because it just happens that the author of a piece of software was female?

Maybe I have never been big on "heroes" or maybe it's just the fact that I never really looked up to anyone as a child and said I wanted to be like them because they were famous, but I think it's pretty silly to think that there is a problem in the world if a particular field is dominated by men. Now I'm not saying that it's ok to discourage people from going into a field of work because it's dominated by men, what I am against is pushing someone towards a field strictly because it is and going as far as to mount an entire campaign around it.

Men and women are not the same; physically and psychologically. While growing up, each person should be given a broad range of fields they can work in when they get older and should be free to make up their own decisions about which one they enjoy the most and what they as an individual are most suited towards.

Of course, as a man, I don't really have a good perspective on how women are treated as they grow up. Maybe there is a good amount of discouragement which men don't get when trying to enter a male dominated field. This is not to say that men aren't discouraged when entering a male dominated field either, it's just we are too self absorbed to care what other people, especially men, think. :)

Then again, I would like to find a woman who understood my work so I doubt have to dumb down my conversation. I really hate doing that.

--

Our inspiration - truly making a difference!

[Wohali]

My third grade teacher at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools was named Ms. Fano. She had the distinction of having assisted in the running and programming of one of the first computers - UNIVAC. It was directly because of her example, and the exciting stories she used to tell about a single console controlling rooms full of vacuum tubes, that I started taking those beige boxes with the colorful apple logo on them a bit more seriously. I can only hope that other girls in my class were just as impressed with those stories of a woman far ahead of her time.

As for open source: over the years, I've found that generally I contribute to projects which directly affect both myself and others who share the same ideals. I wouldn't be caught dead assisting in writing some inane Quake user editor because I don't feel it positively contributes to the world at large. However, I've happily contributed to Mozilla, Rio MP3 transfer software, a now-abandoned terminal emulator for OS/2, xlockmore, and other projects (including games!) which LONG pre-date Linux and the Open Source movement. These projects have helped me feel like I'm making a difference, like I'm doing something to help my peers. I certainly wouldn't rule out assisting in kernel development, device drivers, or pure UNIX-related stuff on an idealistic basis. However....

I'd never presume to speak for women in general, but most of those females I know who program and use *NIX as much as I do don't obsessively do so. On the contrary, most men I know who program and use *NIX do so all night long, sustaining themselves on Jolt and Oreos. I'll bring myself to do that once in a blue moon, but I (like my friends) like to spend more of my free time away from computers. When I get home in the evenings, I like to spend time with my cats, tutor, direct musicals, go out dancing, or a whole slew of other things which don't directly relate to programming. Because of this, I don't usually get involved with open source projects which are time-critical (like kernel releases) or require intense debugging and pouring over technical manuals (like device drivers). I do enough of that at my day job -- and I'd rather leave that sort of work to someone who really enjoys hooking up a logic analyzer, a disassembler and an external serial console to their PC at 2AM to try and get that bizarro sound card warbling correctly with the latest bleeding-edge kernel release.

So when you ask "How do we attract more women to these development projects?" you might also want to ask yourself "Are these projects something which a woman would want to work on?"

I'll let someone else give a review of the significant computing accomplishments provided by women to the Linux and Open Source movements . . . but if it's anything like the contributions women have made to commercial operating systems over the years, it may well be true that key portions of Linux were written entirely by women!

Oh, and by the way, keep your judgements of my preferences of recreational activites to yourself. Just because I don't and won't play Quake doesn't mean I will do anything to stop you from doing so.

I think I'm going to have to argue here.

[aprentic]

Admiral Grace Hopper may be a hard coder and a Righteous Babe, but I'm putting my vote in for Ada Lovelace. I mean really. This chick was the first programmer (of *either* sex), ever. She wrote assembly code and she had to do all her debugging without actually running any tests of her programs. It's too bad her slacker husband couldn't get his com-u-turd finished. I wonder if anyone has ever gone ahead and built that thing, I bet most of Ada's code would have run correctly on it.

What? You actually WANT intelligent females?

[Minmei]

Obviously, there are women in these fields, but not a great deal of us. Those of us that are here generally stay low profile. Why? Tons of reasons. Part of it is the fact that as soon as people discover that you are a female with a clue, there are two common responces (there are more, but these are the ones you get ALL the time).

One - You really don't have a clue, i can treat you like dirt and get away with it, because i'm male, and only males have a clue when it comes to computers.

Two - Ooooh! a female with a clue. She wants to go to bed with me. She really will be thrilled to be informed that i'm her best ambition in life, and heck, i get a new bed buddy out of the deal.

Those of us that survive that, because we love the toys, or have more important things to worry about, keep a very low profile. Just as self defence. Add to that, often we don't get a more intelligent responce by the other females (outside the industry) that we know. "What do you mean you work in computers? Don't you mean you're a technical writer (at best)? -Real- women don't use computers."

Now, don't get me wrong, i have some wonderful female and male friends who are completely savvy. And i do use *nix. I'm cozy w/many flavors. I just don't advertise. And as someone above put it, i do my time at the office. After 60 hours a week getting code and servers to do what i want, when i get home, my computer there is for games and communication w/friends only. I'd rather go to ballet, and out to coffee, than spend yet MORE time staring at that screen.

If you want to find lots of women w/a computer clue, find one. She knows more as friends, and almost with out a doubt, emails/trades stores/shares code/shares info with quite a few more. It's the proverbial underground network. In order to find us, you have to know us. *wry grin* Not the most welcomeing of things, but it's getting more public and better every year. When i started in the "professional" workforce, i knew less than 5 tech savvy women. Now i hear from over a 100 a day. That's just in 3 years. Give us time. As our network gets stronger, and the environments get less hostile, we will get more visible.

A woman's perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

As a woman currently majoring in Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland, I know how hard it can be for women to get into in technology related fields.

When I was in elementary and middle school (in a nationally acclaimed school system), the teachers would generally say that us girls should be in higher level math and science courses. However, what they said is not actually what they did. From the time I was in first grade, my mother and I had to fight constantly to get the school to actually place me into classes that would challenge me in math and science; the school's excuse would always be "Well, these classes are hard, and her schedule is already challenging." This pattern continued into high school, where I actually had my (female) guidance counselor say to me "But physics is so hard...and so is calculus," to try to discourage me from taking them both in the same year. There were only two teachers in my high school that encouraged me to take computer science courses. I was eventually the only girl in the class.

When I got to college, I talked to some other women in my major. The scary thing is this:

They had the same problems I had.

And unfortunately, this problem also extends to the attitudes school systems take with minority students. At a meeting of the Black Engineering Society, I found students of all minority backgrounds sharing similar experiances.

So what can be done? First, fight for your daughters, sisters, and friends and encourage them to challenge the school's placement reccomendations. If my mother had not stood up for me when I was in first through 12th grades, I would not be here at college on a full scholarship.

Also, please fight the stereotypes in society. When I was working as a computer repair technician at the local CompUSA, many customers would ask to speak with the "real technicians" or call me the 'secretary.' Reactions like this, and present biases make it exceedingly difficult to want to stay in such a profession.

I am one of the lucky women who was encouraged by others to become the geek I am today. We are out there...

-NatMarie rainfa1l@happypuppy.com

As a geekgirl

[vampdsy]

This sort of question comes up continually I've noticed, and hasn't really been answered concretely. The main reason I think *I* have noticed is that the support for young girls doing computing is virtually non-existant.

See, realize this. Most of you linux hackers were doing this since your early days of high school -- at the very worst since you hit college. In the adolescent social setup, there is often a congregation of people around a theme.. those who get into linux or computers are largely male "geeks". And the most known thing about male "geeks" is that Women Are From Mars.

No, it's not a "women can't do it" problem at this point, it's an "OH MY GAWD THERE IS A GIRL HERE!!!" phenomenon. Girls who do try to play with computers when they're younger have to constantly navigate this.. as a result they're either scared off or they simply don't get the same exchange of information because they're scaring the geeks.

So, take this girl who was actually interested in computers and throw her into college now. Suddenly she's behind all these guys who've been geeking for years with each other, meanwhile she's been forced to learn it on her own, and she feels the disadvantage strongly. Only now it's worse.. suddenly she's "one of the few geekgirls out there" and thusly desirable by all geeks. And she's STILL not getting the information exchange like everyone else.

A lot of women navigate this by hitting online with male monikers and personas to try and circumvent that attitude (btw, someone recently went to the newsgroups posting roughly the same thing under both male and female names, the male got more respect, the female got hit on), or they just quietly duck back into the mold of "learning it for themselves" as they've always done.

It's a bad situation, really. What *I* would like to see as a strong female geek (who is also trying to avoid hiding either myself or my femininity) is more women helping women, and more women helping the young girls. I don't advocate complete separation.. but having support systems and role models for those starting out is vital. I also don't think that trying to change the geek mindset of "OH MY GAWD THERE IS A GIRL HERE" is going to work, that's just too much a part of being a geek.

As for "why aren't there women in open source support sites out there?" .. uh, very recently there was an article posted here about linuxchix.org.

I, personally, would love to start a branch for women in FreeBSD .. an even rarer phenomenon in my experience. :)

UNIX Systems and Network Administrator and FreeBSD chick,