Dru Lavigne on Women in Open Source
Thought-provoking post from Dru Lavigne about the scarcity of women in open source:
To me, equating “code” with “open source” is so early 90s. The closest analogy I can think of is equating “doctors” with “health care”. While doctors tend to get the glory, there is a whole ecosystem of paramedics, RNs, candy stripers and volunteers, technicians, midwives, administrative staff, etc. and etc. that keep the health care system up and running. As open source projects mature, they go light years beyond a developer scratching an itch into ecosystems containing foundations with administrative staff, advocates, lawyers, conference organizers, trainers, support contracters, technical writers, and so on.
So, at the risk of raising the ire of women programmers everywhere, I propose that the problem to be solved isn’t “how do we get women to program in open source?” but rather “what are the roles in open source and who can we get to fill them?”. I think that projects who can define and enable their roles will be both richer for the experience and pleasantly surprised to see how many women pop out of the woodwork.
I’m not sure I agree, but I’m not sure I don’t…
I’m not sure what to think either, but two knee-jerk reactions: (1) the doctors/health care analogy seems apt, in terms of highlighting that open source is about more than programming, but (2) few would think it alright if many women were involved in health care but few were doctors (or if many are involved in business and few are CEOs, etc…).
I am merely one small data point, but I have never found a role in the open source community that I would even consider doing. For years I have thought “G is would be a good idea to have a little open source work on my resume”…which is usually followed by a few days of looking for a project to excite me…which is concluded by “maybe in a few months”…
I don’t know whether it is the distribution of teams that bothers me or the lack of project that I find personally relevant. Maybe some day…