To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source
by Selena Deckelmann09/28/2007
Selena Deckelmann bikes herself to work everyday at Chris King Precision Components, a bicycle parts manufacturer in Portland, OR, where she is Information Systems Manager.
I was an 18-year-old chemistry major working at Dunkin' Donuts when I got my first help desk job. Over a weekend, I went from deep-frying old fashioned donuts to fixing whatever computer a student brought in off the street. And I spent months in the computing center with guys who told stories. I learned about 14-year olds writing hotel management software for their parents, the insane phone bills for long-distance BBS connections, and all-nighters to unlock the secrets of some new feature on a motherboard. I met the guys who worked with PDP-11s in college and now were running NFS fileservers for corporations.
I also knew the UNIX admins at the university who laughed out loud about writing a Towers of Hanoi program in a sendmail config. I knew the geeks who were loving the university's gigabit network—mainly for finding porn and cracked software. I went with the guys to DefCon and was horrified, but also fascinated, when they announced that someone had poured concrete in the toilets.
To me, each one of these stories was a thrilling mystery or a madcap adventure. The chemical reactions needed to make carbon chains just didn't compare to the drama of "kill -9". And soon, I chose to spend all my spare time with my coworkers, rather than my classmates. Organic chemistry was the last class I took before changing majors. I switched to computer science because I had found my community.
My coworkers helped me build my first computer, taught me C, and some became my boyfriends. Because I was a girl who wanted to learn how a computer worked, as well as hang out and gossip until 2:00 a.m. with the boys, I thought there was something special about me. They did, too. Thirteen years later, I'm a sysadmin and a programmer. I still pull all-nighters tweaking Perl scripts or helping a friend move their blog to a new ISP. And I still mostly work with men.
Despite the best efforts of a moderator, a Birds of a Feather talk about women in Open Source seemed to end in confusion. There were certainly individuals with opinions, but, as a group, we couldn't seem to identify what we wanted, or what to do about this situation. We know that Open Source communities want more women. But invitations to participate aren't enough. Women should be contributing to projects openly and equally with men. But what can we do to get there? Here are some things that I think we can do right now:
We can learn and use the names of women who contribute to Open Source projects. In the Perl community, Allison Randal and Audrey Tang come to mind. There are many other prominent and talented women in other groups. We can recognize and encourage contributions to Open Source projects that aren't code. The FLOSSPOLS study on gender issues pointed out that women are more likely to engage in areas not considered technical by the community—documentation, design, mailing-list moderation and advocacy. What if projects gave the equivalent of commit access to graphic designers and conference speakers?
We can talk to women who come to user group meetings and invite them to speak. By being friendly and asking women directly to speak up, we open the door for participation. If we insist on equal participation, the structure of our organizations will change. The first time I spoke up in a user group was terrifying, but I did so because a peer politely, but repeatedly, asked me to speak.
We can learn from research about increasing diversity. I'm sure smart people have summarized, put together lists of bullet points, and made handbooks to show how to do it. Certainly, organizations dedicated to fixing inequalities will be touchstones for change. But we need more than leadership to change our culture. We each can take steps now to make women feel like there is a place for them in our communities.
I found my place in the computing center. My coworkers listened to me when I was frustrated, and encouraged me not to give up whenever I felt stupid or overwhelmed. We bonded over makefiles, rootkits and long, tedious troubleshooting. They were my mentors, friends, adversaries, and peers. I think we IT folks share a passion for fixing things. We solve problems other people find impossible every day. Just a small amount of that energy directed toward encouraging women to join in openly would go a long way.
Series creator and editor Tatiana Apandi Recommends: Open Source Women's Groups: http://www.linuxchix.org/other-groups-women-free-software.html and submit papers on your experience as a woman in open source for the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE).
The Women in Technology book is coming soon; buy it from the O'Reilly Store!
Return to Women in Technology.
Showing messages 1 through 21 of 21.
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Wow, Selena, I am impressed!
2007-10-09 12:55:20 masinick [Reply | View]
I have only known a handful of true, 100% geeks during my thirty four year involvement in software. There were, I believe, three women who graduated along with me in the Computer Science program back in the seventies. All three of them were very smart, but I would not label any of them as geeks. I have known a lot of very good software engineers, and even among them, I would only label a handful of them as real geeks. But the descriptions you gave, whether actual events or hyped up exaggerations of real events definitely qualify, not only as geek events, but stereotypical geek events - more intense than any I have known.
I do know geeks to frequently sleep by day whenever possible and come out at night. In the seventies, that was when we could get the best use of computer time, and have fewer than a dozen people using computers of the day with "mainframe" capabilities.
A few geeks I knew literally slept in the computer room.
I'm not sure you will find very many women who behave like or typify the kind of descriptions you've given. It's that kind of stuff that probably scares many people, male and female alike, away!
Nevertheless, I found your article amusing, and I could see elements of truth in it for the small handful of geeks that I have known.
As for me, I could only claim perhaps 10% geek in my blood! ;-)
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Geeky women
2007-10-01 18:11:55 JJSans [Reply | View]
It's not a guy thing, it's a geek thing.
Our local LUG has been in existence for over 6 years but does virtually no advertising. Most of the 200+ members have searched the web for a LUG. And almost all of them are guys, at ages between 15 and 65. Over the past 2 years, there have been 3 women occasionally attending meetings. Everyone has been polite to them and included them in conversations. We would love to have more women join, but our wives and girlfriends aren't interested and would probably frown on us making too much of an effort to recruit specifically women.
The issue is not your standard 'women vs. men' bumping against the glass ceiling. It's the field. Most people in general find what we do horribly boring. But in my experience, of the ones who enjoy it, many more are males than females. A majority of the men I know in the business consider working with computers to be a job and a hobby, and that goes double for FOSS. Honestly, how many women do you know who spend hours and hundreds/thousands of dollars on hardware and/or software, at home, on their own time, because it intrigues them? I know quite a few guys who do.
There are many women in the fields of medicine, politics, science, and the military. But most have made the choice to stay out of the computer business. If you have a plan to change that, and could use our help in a way that won't interfere with our passion for computers, let us know.
Later . . . Jim
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Plan for change
2007-10-04 18:07:35 sdeckelmann [Reply | View]
Hi Jim,
Sorry it took me a few days to reply. Thanks for your thoughts.
To be honest, I'm not sure how to respond to some of what you've written. Your comment about wives and girlfriends did make me laugh -- I wondered what you think all the husbands of the female geeks might assume when their wives go off to a user group meeting full of men. Or for that matter, a workplace full of men -- a situation that is virtually inevitable for all of us partnered, but female, geeks.
Thank you for your offer to help -- if you want some ideas, I'd love to learn more about your group. Please email me and I'll tell you what I think. selenamarie -at- gmail -dot- com
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You are probably right
2007-10-01 12:48:53 wjl [Reply | View]
Selena,
thanks for your great article.
When I look back at my IT history, there are not many occasions where I met or dealt with females, tho I don't think it is really IT-specific. I also don't know many females in chemistry or in any other area.
But in these rare occasions where I did, it was always a great experience, and I hope that it wasn't only me who felt that way.
I've had female coworkers who were clearly better than me. No problem. There are many - well maybe not that many, but still - Debian developers who are women - I'm no DD, so they have the same respect from my side like men. And who wouldn't know TC, especially here, or people like Evi Nemeth? Even J.C. Herz comes to my mind, tho nowadays she might be consulting the troops with all her knowledge - something I would rather not be doing.
I remember when I met my own wife, and taught her the first steps in HTML. Now, she's far better in CSS and XHTML than me, and maybe also in MySQL and in PHP. It's always a matter of how deep you like to dig into the problems, right? And I still have to find the area where I would like to get into really knee-deep. My former boss always "sold" me as the security guy, but then - it's nice to share in-depth knowledge amongst equals, right? No matter if we're male or female.
It makes me sad to hear horror stories, and reading good stuff like yours gives me some hope.
Thanks again, and keep up the good work,
Wolfgang -
Thanks!
2007-10-04 18:12:38 sdeckelmann [Reply | View]
Hi Wolfgang,
Thank you for the compliments! :)
I have met Evi Nemeth. I think she is retired on a lovely yacht somewhere, based on her website. During my first trip to LISA (USENIX conference), I met four women over 50 who really inspired me to pursue system administration. They did it just by being there.
Happy to hear from you, and thanks again.
-selena
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Great article!
2007-10-01 11:26:17 KimMoir [Reply | View]
Recently we've been having this dicussion in our (eclipse) community regarding diversity.
http://eclipse-projects.blogspot.com/2007/09/diversity-just-lip-service.html
The scope of the discussion is not diversity with respect to gender, but rather the number of companies that provide committers to each project.
Another important factor to consider when trying to increase the number of women in open source is mentoring. For instance, the company I work for conducts day camps for middle-school girls to expose them to various aspects of computer science and engineering. We try to dispel the stereotypes of technology as a solitary, geeky discipline and expose them to the benefits of this career. Follow-up studies have shown that having this role model makes a significant difference in the career options these girls consider as they progess through their schooling.
Kim Moir
Eclipse JDT, PDE, Equinox and Platform Release Engineering
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measures of diversity
2007-10-01 14:45:45 sdeckelmann [Reply | View]
Thanks for the pointer to that discussion. I liked this quote:
A project without diversity is a bad thing IMHO. Might as well be closed source. (from pombreda)
The pie-charts that came out of that discussion were great.
I agree about the need for mentorship. I like to focus more on apprenticeship - as is mentioned in this entry from DevChix (near the bottom) - http://www.devchix.com/2007/09/30/rubyeast-recap-slides-and-other-thoughts/
I was basically an apprentice in my first jobs - with more experienced sysadmins or programmers handing off small tasks for me to complete. I think the master-apprentice model appeals to me because it implies a more structured agreement between parties about work that needs to be done.
I'm very interested in the middle-school program you mentioned. Here in Portland, we've been talking about who we might partner with and what we might do to develop computer programming clubs or camps for girls. We've already got the Rock'n Roll Camp for Girls -- maybe we could develop a programming/robotics/engineering camp as well.
Love the name of your blog, btw. -
measures of diversity
2007-10-02 05:53:15 KimMoir [Reply | View]
You're welcome :-)
The camp is called EXITE.
http://www.ibm.com/ibm/ibmgives/grant/education/camp.shtml
http://archive.ottawabusinessjournal.com/archive_detail.php?archiveFile=./pubfiles/obj/archive/2007/August/01/OBJ-Technology/21472.xml&start=0&numPer=20&keyword=exite+ibm§ionSearch=&begindate=1%2F1%2F1999&enddate=12%2F31%2F2007&authorSearch=&IncludeStories=1&pubsection=&page=&IncludePages=1&IncludeImages=1&mode=allwords&archive_pubname=OBJ-Print%0A%09%09%09
If I recall correctly, there was one in Beaverton, OR this year.
It was a lot of fun, especially the session where the girls were asked to build and program a dance routine for Lego mindstorms robots. Pretty funny!
Kim
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Audrey Tang not a good example
2007-09-30 11:09:47 treoubo [Reply | View]
Audrey Tang is a transgendered man, not a woman. She was able to enter the project as a man and didn't have to face the problems that women would face just starting out in a project.
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Encouraging none code contributions
2007-09-29 02:51:16 fauigerzigerk [Reply | View]
Selena, I think it is problematic to ask for non-code contributions to be valued more to support women. These contributions are considered less important because they really ARE less important. Open source is about writing code, first and foremost.
I strongly believe that for women to play a bigger part in IT (which we all want), they have to be encouraged to take on the hard core, high value, high reputation roles. -
Encouraging non-code contributions
2007-10-01 08:18:27 sdeckelmann [Reply | View]
I agree that women:
have to be encouraged to take on the hard core, high value, high reputation roles.
Howeer, over the lifetime of a project, non-code contributions become very important. PostgreSQL, for example, has a very strict policy about including documentation with patches. In a presentation about how to contribute, Josh Berkus listed 50 ways, only five of which were code.
I think the perspective on what constitutes an open source project has shifted (some might say "matured" :) in the last ten years from "just the code" to the whole lifecycle of design, documentation, implementation and support. -
Encouraging none code contributions
2007-09-30 12:01:34 Carla Schroder [Reply | View]
Right, because undocumented code is so valuable and useful.
In other words, no, I don't believe that "Open source is about writing code, first and foremost." Software development is more than just writing code. It's planning, testing, debugging, getting feedback from users, improving and maintaining it. Graphical apps need good artwork. Games need great artwork, music, and sound effects.
Amateurs dash off first drafts and then move on, leaving someone else to clean up the mess. Professionals recognize that good programming is a complex discipline with a lot of important inter-dependent roles.
OTOH, I do agree that encouraging more people to try programming is a good thing. I'm just not real crazy about this whole goofy hero-worship of coders. -
Encouraging none code contributions
2007-09-29 10:30:49 the_osg [Reply | View]
Many of these "less important" roles are difficult to get out of. One idea that I had at a previous job was to write documentation for 75% of my time and learn to test 25% of my time. At the time, the idea was shot down and I have not attempted to try again. Going forward, I will just do it with the risk of low productivity for a couple of weeks or months. Sometimes, a person just has to risk not asking for permission. Personal growth is worth that risk of loosing a job.
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Men do have some responsibility.
2007-09-28 09:57:24 RachelPhilPa [Reply | View]
Male I/T folk need to stop making sexist and misogynist attacks against women in the industry. We can't continue to have situations like what happened to Kathy Sierra, where she had to shut down her blog and cancel an appearance at a major conference in fear for her life, after receiving rape and death threats on her technology blog because she dared to be competent while female. As long as that kind of things happen, women (including myself) will be scared to participate in the open-source movement. -
Men do have some responsibility.
2007-09-28 17:31:42 RickMoen [Reply | View]
If I may try to help for a moment: Guys, Rachel is right. Rachel, plenty of men of goodwill are oblivious to this problem because they either don't commit these offences and have never witnessed them, or do contribute to the problem in minor ways but aren't aware of what they're doing. Major assholedom is rare; minor jerkishness is very common.
It would be nice to know what to suggest, but nothing comes to mind beyond what Rachel and (e.g.) Val Henson do: Matter-of-factly pointing out the problem, ignoring the inevitable trolls / knee-jerk arguers, and refuting those suggesting that the situation's symmetric, which it is not.
Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com -
Men do have some responsibility.
2007-09-29 10:35:23 Carla Schroder [Reply | View]
Rick, you're close but not quite there. Major assholedom is common, as is minor jerkishness. Even when you don't see it yourself, it's reported a lot. There are two predictable responses when we talk about the crap that gets dumped on us just for being women:
1. That sucks and it should not be that way (yay!)
2. There is no problem, so shut up. (stab!)
A variation on #2 is "flames and hostility are part of FOSS. Get used to it."
Too many FOSS projects are too tolerant of toxic pests and destructive behavior. I think the jerks are a sizable, loud minority, but still a minority. There needs to be a lot less tolerance of poisonous behavior. What to do? Here are some suggestions:
1. Silence = assent. Speak up against bad conduct.
2. Hit the delete key- list and forum admins have the power.
3. Give disruptive troublemakers the boot.
Yeah I know, censorship list cops blah blah. We're not obligated to provide podiums for hostile, destructive people to spew their bile from. It's a big slap in the face to the courteous people who actually contribute to projects to tolerate the trolls and jerks. No one- absolutely no one- is such an indispensible genius that they can be excused from ordinary courtesy and respect. That includes Linus, everyone's favorite cuddly flamer. I had to laugh out loud at an article a few months ago- Andrew morton, I think it was- who invited more people to get involved in kernel development and posting bug reports. Riiiight- come on masochists, this is a job for you! You'll get all the beatings you can handle!
This isn't just a women's issue, though we're the only ones brave enough to speak up about it. How many talented men have been turned off to FOSS because of the dorks? How many non-white women and men?
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Men do have some responsibility.
2007-10-01 07:36:18 RickMoen [Reply | View]
Carla, some of the rather appalling responses to Selena's story (in particular) suggest that your characterisation, here, is dead-on correct, much as it chagrins me to say it.
Anyhow, FWIW, I'm pretty much on your side of the issue, anyway: I was just trying to stress to men of goodwill that, just because they never (or seldom) noticed the syndrome occurring in their presence, they shouldn't dismiss the reports of Selena and others that it's a serious issue.
My point is, guys, that this is real, and views like Rachel's (above) should be taken with due seriousness.
Rick Moen
Rick@linuxmafia.com -
So do women.
2007-09-28 12:37:02 sdeckelmann [Reply | View]
Hi Rachel,
First, There are many, many places where you can find a list of "what not to do". I tried to give a list of "what to do".
Second, where would you like to participate? Which project? Please contact me -- selenamarie -at- gmail -dot- com, and perhaps I can put you in touch with someone in that community that would allay your fears.
I feel terrible about what happened to Kathy. And I support taking action to reduce the chance something like that would happen again. However, I don't think that's the norm. It certainly has not been for me, and as Audrey mentioned in her article - participating off-line is certainly an option. My experience has been that most open source work is done among small groups of connected people.
-selena
(http://infohost.nmt.edu/~val/review/flosspols.pdf)
I think that you have actually hit the nail on the head better than any other commentators as to what we need to do to change this. I.e. we need to focus on creating architectures of participation where everyone can contribute according to his/her ability, and encouraging people to participate.
However, as in mathematics, there appears to be a fairly male-centered culture around open source. I personally think that it has to do with most great hackers being borderline OCD and coming from families where the object of one's obsession is technical (for example, I come from a family of scientists, and my grandmother was writing Astrophysics simulations in Fortran since before I was born). I will sometimes obsess about techical issues so that I am nearly always looking for a solution to them for *days.* Hence within the hacker culture there may be cultural issues beyond our immediate control. The challenge is hence to ensure that the hacker culture doesn't equal the FOSS culture, and that everyone is welcome provided that they are not obnoxious or harmful to the project.
The problem with these larger issues, however, is that they allow sexism in open source projects to go unnoticed, and for a very male-centric culture to thrive in some areas of FOSS.
In this spirit, I think that it would really help to build larger communities if there were groups out there that were rating open source projects as to how well women felt like they were encouraged to participate. I think we would find in this case that those projects which incouraged widespread contribution from large numbers of people would do better than those which tried to restrict contributions to a small number of core people. This would also allow us to look for other things that could be done to help build a more diverse contributor culture.