Women’s role in open source
There have been a few studies about women in open source – mostly focused on the fact that there are so few of us – only 2% by some counts! Leslie Hawthorne's comment got me thinking:
I far more often than not find women playing a similar role and doing similar tasks: building communities, creating space for creativity and connection to manifest, taking care of mundane and arcane details so that others can focus on executing to a grander vision.
It made me stop and think about what role women play in open source. The stereotype has been that they tend to act on the periphery in roles like documentation but looking back at the past few conferences I've been to and I had to agree with Leslie. I've seen a lot of women in community building roles. The community meetings I go to typically are way more than 2% women – maybe even as high as 25%!
What roles do you see women filling in open source?
2 Responses »
I think people, regardless of sex, should do whatever they want and are good at. If that means community building, coding, etc… then that’s what they should do.