[clug] Open Source Software's Dirty Little Secret

[Brendan Jurd]

2009/9/10 Lana Brindley <lanabrindley at gmail.com>:
> If you're not interested in promoting women's involvement in Open
> source, or if you think that women don't belong in IT, please don't
> click on the link.

Thanks for the link, Lana.

I don't fall into either of the above categories but I do have trouble
accepting this idea that open source is "sexist" or that there's a
"dirty little secret".

Until these CLUG threads started showing up, I hadn't given much
thought to the lack of women in FOSS, so I'm fairly new to this topic.
 I grew up playing video games, programming, reading comic books,
playing Games Workshop games and tabletop RPGs.  I encountered very
few girls interested in any of those hobbies, and the situation hasn't
changed.  I just got used to the idea that my nerdy hobbies were not
appealling to females for some reason.

When I added FOSS to my list of hobbies, there were hardly any women
there either.  I didn't find it surprising -- and given prior
experience, why would I?

The article dismisses the "lack of interest" angle by pointing out
that the ratio of females in proprietary software is much higher.  But
as one of the commenters observed, you can't draw a direct comparison
between interest in paid work and interest in a hobby.  A lot of
people are willing to do jobs that they aren't passionate about,
especially if the pay is good.  But to participate in FOSS, to do it
for free, in your spare time, as a hobby, you have to be extremely and
deeply passionate about software.  Out of the people I've encountered
who work in IT, only a tiny fraction have the kind of enthusiasm that
drives a person to contribute to a FOSS project.

The 1.5% figure that has been bandied about lately is presented as
being shockingly low, and damning evidence of some kind of rampant
sexism or systemic defect in FOSS.  But to be honest it matches up
pretty tidily with my experiences with other geeky hobbies.  If you
told me that only 1.5% of Warhammer 40K players are female, I'd shrug
and say that sounds about right.  Maybe even a little high.  Would you
expect to find 1.5% female attendance at a LAN party?  What about a
Dungeons & Dragons session?

So when I hear that only 1.5% of FOSS contributors are female, I'm not
shocked or outraged.  I'm long since resigned to it and I suspect a
lot of FOSS contributors are in the same boat.  Would I like there to
be more women interested in my hobbies?  Most certainly!  Of course I
would.  It's a bummer that they are total sausage fests.  But I just
don't see how that would change without some massive paradigm shifts
in society generally.

Cheers,
BJ