Women's contribution to Free Software

1. Free Software and Feminism
Christina Haralanova
FSCONS, 15 November 2009

2. The AWID Forum 2008
● 2200 women
gathered in Cape
Town
● To discuss, unite
and network
● Feminist Tech
Exchange (FTX)
talking about
software freedom

3. Feminism, power and movements
Feminism strives for
shifting power with
the idea of equality
in mind. Not with
the aim to make
men powerless, but
to ensure powerless
are represented.

4. Women in software development
● 1,1% of women in FOSS development,
according to Flosspols (2002)
● 25-28% of women in proprietary software
Reasons?

5. The software industry Free Software field
● Stereotyping kids ● Hard to start : lack of
courses in school
● School divide
curricula, finding
● Male gaming industry friends who can help
● Gap in computer ● Low confidence and
initiation: 12 years for perception that you
boys and 15 – for girls never know enough
● Challenges of a male ● Women are often
dominated profession noticed more as women
(unequal pay, glass than as contributors
ceiling, etc.) ● Insults, *jokes*, doubts
of her intelligence

6. Hierarchising contributions
● The super value of the coding skill in FOSS
dev
● However, developer's profession consists of
30% coding
● “To make FLOSS successful, we need not only
Richard Stallman or Linus Torvalds, but also a
great amount of volunteers reporting and
fixing bugs, writing documentation, and more
importantly, teach users how to use the
program” (Lin, 2006).

7. Documentation can be a means of quality insurance, and
this power is far too seldom used, not only in Open Source
development.The people who write the best code I know
write documentation alongside or even before coding: The
code has to follow documentation, otherwise it's a bug :), at
least documentation and code are never allowed to get out of
sync. Which means documentation_is_development, not just
something subordinate.
Patricia Jung,2005
about Debian Project

8. Why is this problematic?

9. ● Women and men contribute differently to
FS development
● While men are overrepresented in tasks
related to coding, women engage more
often in writing documentation, graphic
interface, moderation, training
● Not because women are not technical
enough, but because not all of them have
the necessary background and
confidence contribute to the code.

10. (Re)define FS Development
● Two risks coming from the problem:
● Women's work remains invisible and less
appreciated because of its less technical nature
● If all activities related to FOSS development are
not taken as equally important, the software will
become more oriented to the developers and not
to the users
● Convergence between social and technical
activities => a way to valorise women's
contribution => more women will become
visible

11. Conclusion
● 1%
● In the study “Portrait of FS in Quebec”,
participated 16% of women
● Women at conferences are usually 10 % and >
● Female speakers at Oekonux = 23%
● Women in Drupal are more than 10% (core
developers, leads, and others)