[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Gender Question

[arhyno at uwindsor.ca]

>I ran across a posting the other day suggesting that women interested in
>open-source solutions use OSS solutions developed by women. 
>
>Ok, I admit I'm naive here--is there a gender gap in OSS development? Can
>someone chime in on why this would be a suggestion or even a serious
>consideration? Perhaps the suggestion is sarcasm?  Why not just work with
>existing OSS developers, be they men or women? 

There was a panel in 2005 at EuroOSCON on the gender imbalance in OSS that 
received wide coverage, Piers Cawley's summary [1] is a good starting 
point. I have never seen any statistics on this topic that were not dismal 
for Open Source (2% female participation is a widely quoted figure, which 
is staggering). I have also never seen any breakdowns by country for OSS, 
but back when Forbes presented an incredibly wrong minded column on why 
men shouldn't marry career women [2] (retrofitted to be a his/her "light" 
topic dialogue), I was surprised there wasn't more attention drawn to 
evidence that places that the United Nations rank highest for "best places 
to live" tend to fare much better and be strong arguments for gender 
balance in the workplace and volunteer organizations. So I wonder if 
Denmark and Norway, to pick two recent U.N. choices, have higher rates of 
female participation in Open Source than the rest of the world, in 
addition to apparently producing more happily married couples with 
multiple careers than among the Forbes readership. For that matter, there 
are also places that don't rank high on the U.N. scale but are outside of 
North America where there seems to be a much more even mix of male and 
female participants in Computer Science education at least [3], and I 
suspect that this trend also carries over to OSS projects in these 
countries. There was a recent story in Macleans on how almost every area 
of university study is now predominantly female except for computer 
science and the physical sciences [4]. Although seemingly more concerned 
with campus dating patterns in Canada, the article points out that 
proactive measures in high school have made a big difference on university 
enrollment patterns. 

OSS projects could also benefit from proactive steps, and maybe this was 
behind the suggested rationale that women interested in open-source 
solutions use OSS solutions developed by women, but I must say that I have 
never seen any projects that specifically address gender balance in OSS, 
such as debian women [5], take this particular approach. The added 
dynamics of what is still largely a volunteer and somewhat fringe activity 
in libraries would suggest that OSS projects need as much participation as 
possible, and any barriers to entry need to be removed, whether related to 
gender or any other factor.  Evergreen is astounding for many reasons, but 
not the least of which is that it was built with the full support of a 
library organization. This is still rare, though Evergreen's success will 
put OSS on the radar of more library administrators than ever before. That 
being said, I don't believe that the late night tinkering aspect of OSS in 
libraries really favours one gender in any biological sense. My wife, who 
is a librarian, lawyer, and newspaper editor/publisher, in addition to 
being the mother of three children, is often working away long after my 
head has hit the keyboard. I won't be at Access next week, but "women in 
OSS" would make a great BOF for those lucky enough to be in Victoria. 
Access is a great snapshot of the makeup of the IT landscape in libraries. 
Whatever the gender mix at the conference, it would probably be a good 
indication of where libraries are in terms of gender representation in 
library-related technology.

Way back in 1985, when I was doing a C.S. thesis on monte carlo methods 
(with tons of code written in module-2 and even some assembler), a female 
classmate tackled gender equity in computer science education, and 
although the numbers are still not balanced in Canada, they have come a 
long way since then, and other countries have done even better. Gender 
inequities in OSS are unfortunate because in a very real sense such trends 
betray much more in an Open Source context, but I am more than hopeful 
that this won't be the case in libraries. I have certainly never heard the 
nasty comments that Piers brings forward in his posting, and the 
"poisonous" and "newbie-hostile" communities he identifies are completely 
opposite to anything I have encountered with the Evergreen folks or, 
really, any other OSS project to do with libraries. And believe me, I 
could tell some stories about those hostile monte carlo crunching 
physicists and their snotty specialized simulations back when the Berlin 
wall was still standing...

art
---
1. http://www.bofh.org.uk/articles/2005/11/02/women-in-open-source
2. 
http://www.forbes.com/home/2006/08/23/Marriage-Careers-Divorce_cx_mn_land.html 
(warning, multiple layers of ads to get anywhere near content)
3. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1140123.1140184
4. 
http://thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0012889
5. http://women.debian.org/about/
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