I'm going to ignore the naseau coming up from the craft comments, and state that I think it's entirely a matter of numbers.
If one in a thousand programmers contributes to open source, and 28% of those earning computing degrees are women, and 50% of them remain in computing careers, we certainly should expect very few women in open source.
Add to the fact that women in families still do most of the housework and childrearing, and optional fun activities like contributing to open source are going to happen in even smaller percentages.
Kim Flournoy
· 3 years ago
I'd like to point out that plenty of people contribute to open source projects "behind the scenes" by logging bugs, contributing to user forums and mailing lists, and writing to those on the project with feedback and feature ideas.
Not everyone has the time to take a substantial unpaid role on one of these projects, but there are those of us who pitch in where we can to help out our favorite products.
And this applies to people of any gender - there are plenty of projects that don't get developed or are abandoned because of lack of programmers. Men need to pay rent, too...
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If one in a thousand programmers contributes to open source, and 28% of those earning computing degrees are women, and 50% of them remain in computing careers, we certainly should expect very few women in open source.
Add to the fact that women in families still do most of the housework and childrearing, and optional fun activities like contributing to open source are going to happen in even smaller percentages.
Not everyone has the time to take a substantial unpaid role on one of these projects, but there are those of us who pitch in where we can to help out our favorite products.
And this applies to people of any gender - there are plenty of projects that don't get developed or are abandoned because of lack of programmers. Men need to pay rent, too...