Last I checked, only about 2 percent of developers were women.
Just now read this:
The GNOME Foundation received 181 applications for the Google Summer of Code (SoC) program, but not a single application was from a female developer. The lack of women participating in GNOME, and free software in general, has spurred the GNOME foundation to start a summer program to reach out to female developers.
Amazing, considering that GNOME is a core element of open source desktops. (They make, um, the desktop.) And absolutely commendable for the GNOME open source team.
via GNOME needs women
http://www.gnome.org/
function stableMatching {
Initialize all m M and w W to free
while free man m who still has a woman w to propose to {
w = m’s highest ranked such woman
if w is free
engage (m, w)
else some pair (m’, w) already exists
if w prefers m to m’
(m, w) become married
m’ becomes free
else
(m’, w) remain married
}
}
… but anyway it just proves that beauty just makes everyone unhappy.
WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: LinuxChix Africa
“LinuxChix Africa manages to shatter two stereotypes at the same time: the idea that women aren’t interested in free/open source software development; and the idea that women in Africa are bound to traditional cultural roles. Founded in late 2004 by Anna Badimo, a computer science graduate student in South Africa, and Dorcas Muthoni of the Kenya Education Network, LinuxChix Africa seeks to build Linux skills among African women, as well as to support more generally the use of free/open source applications and systems across Africa. Like most Linux and F/OSS communities, much of their work entails professional software development and public advocacy of open source, but LinuxChix Africa adds a unique twist: they focus their outreach on encouraging young women to pursue careers in computing.”
Last week a 2004 article turned up on Eldis: a consideration of how to measure the impact of ICTs in women’s lives. The article begins with a great discussion of what a gender perspective means for people working with technologies of communication. (It cites the United Nations as finding that ICT access is the third most important issue facing women, after violence and poverty.)
The conclusion of the study is essentially that those who implement ICTs must take into consideration the real lives and conditions of women, else they are liable to perpetuate inequaliy.
“Computer technology (like any technology) is shaped by the values, assumptions, goals and prejudices of those involved in its design, engineering and financing. Its use and influence in society is shaped by the roles, values, assumptions and goals of those who own it and those who can access it. Technologies introduced into environments characterised by inequality tend to reinforce and even exacerbate it.”
I found it especially important that they emphasize the necessity of involving women (indeed all stakeholders in the program equally) in the design and implementation process.
This connects fundamentally with a participatory evaluation approach, the concept that you have to (in the author’s words):
- Involve stakeholders as the evaluators of your program (those who determine the meaning of success).
- Link evaluation findings to action.
- Encourage evaluation that is truly “participatory (by all stakeholders): involvement of all types of stakeholder in the evaluation process, particularly at the grass roots level, and support for accountability.”
- Be context sensitive to the reality of the user environment.
Via Eldis.
A Major O’Reilly Open Source Convention next week in Portland (OR) is hosting a panel of women developers (Update- It’s even worse; women’s representation in IT generally has gone down 20% since 1994.)