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arXiv:2103.08763cs.SE

Please Don't Go -- A Comprehensive Approach to Increase Women's Participation in Open Source Software

Bianca Trinkenreich

Abstract

Women represent less than 24% of employees in the software development industry and experience various types of prejudice and bias. Despite various efforts to increase diversity and multi-gendered participation, women are even more underrepresented in Open Source Software (OSS) projects. In my PhD, I investigate the following question: How can OSS communities increase women's participation in their projects? I will identify different OSS career pathways and develop a holistic view of women's motivations to join or leave OSS, as well as their definitions of success. Based on this empirical investigation, I will work together with the Linux Foundation to design attraction and retention strategies focused on women. Before and after implementing the strategies, I will conduct empirical studies to evaluate the state of the practice and understand the implications of the strategies.

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Journal reference
DOI
Subjects
cs.SESoftware Engineering cs.CYComputers and Society

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Linked by 2 identifiable commenters in 2 comments across 2 threads, from Dec 2021 to Jul 2023.

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  1. xAI 1 comment

    • This is true for employees in mainstream careers. Unfortunately it seems to not hold when looking at major open source projects, where gender diversity is routinely below 10% female. The picture gets even worse when proportioning representation by the quantity of…

      simondotauView on HNParent context

  2. WTF Is Wrong with Open Source Communities? 1 comment

    • > You can look at the pipeline of programmers and you will see a demographic pretty similar to open source. Source please? Last I heard of, that was not the case. As https://www.wired.com/2017/06/diversity-open-source-even-wor... contexualizes about the research published at…

      eesmithView on HNParent context

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