It's no secret that women are underrepresented in open source. But what are the reasons for this? And what can we do about it? This article presents the results of a recent survey of the literature on this topic.
Participation of Women in Open Source Software (OSS)
Participation of women in Open Source Software (OSS) is very unbalanced, despite various efforts to improve diversity. This is concerning not only because women do not get the chance for career and skill development afforded by OSS, but also because OSS projects suffer from a lack of diversity of thought due to limited female participation. Studies characterizing women’s participation and investigating how to attract and retain them span multiple fields, including information systems, software engineering, and social science.
Trinkenreich, Bianca, et al. systematically collected, aggregated, and synthesized the current state of research on women's participation in open source software in their paper "Women's Participation in Open Source Software: A Survey of the Literature". Here is a brief overview of the main findings:
The authors identified 51 articles (published between 2005 and 2021) that investigate women’s participation in OSS. According to the literature, women represent about 9.8% of OSS contributors; most are recent contributors, aged 20–37, devote less than 5 hours per week to OSS, and make both non-code and code contributions. Only 5% of projects have women as core developers, and women author less than 5% of pull-requests but have similar or even higher merge acceptance rates than men.
Challenges Faced by Women When Contributing to OSS Projects
Women mainly face social challenges when contributing to OSS projects, which can influence their decision to leave a project. Understanding the reasons behind their decisions to step away can help create strategies to increase retention. Key challenges include:
- Lack of Peer Parity – Women often feel alienated, frustrated, invisible, and less comfortable without other women present, especially in medium-sized projects where contributors are predominantly male.
- Non-Inclusive Communication – The use of expletives in mailing lists, documentation, and code reviews can be insulting and discouraging.
- Toxic Culture – Incidents of symbolic violence, harassment, and sexism create a hostile environment that hinders women's participation.
- Impostor Syndrome – Despite competence, many women experience a lack of self-efficacy and are reluctant to publicly showcase their work compared to men.
- Community Reception Issues – Difficulties in finding mentors, coupled with misinterpretations of their gender, can lead women to hide their identity and feel unwelcome in some communities.
- Stereotyping – Women are often boxed into specific roles, with assumptions about their behavior and appearance undermining their contributions.
- Work-Life Balance – Family responsibilities leave women with less time to contribute to OSS projects.
Strategies to Increase Women’s Participation in OSS Projects
To create a more inclusive environment for women in OSS, communities can implement actionable strategies such as:
- Promote Awareness of Peer Presence – Increase the visibility of female contributors to reduce feelings of isolation and encourage more participation.
- Women-Specific Groups and Events – Organize events, forums, and training sessions exclusively for women to foster skill development and confidence.
- Promote Inclusive Language – Use language that is welcoming and avoids assumptions about gender.
- De-stereotype OSS Roles – Challenge traditional gender roles by encouraging women to take on both code and community management tasks.
- Encourage and Support Female Contributions – Foster a friendly and supportive community where women feel confident contributing both code and non-code work.
- Promote Women to Leadership Roles – Provide leadership training and opportunities for women to assume senior, decision-making, and mentoring roles.
- De-bias Tools – Employ techniques like Gendermag to identify and adjust biases in software tools to better suit women’s cognitive styles.
- Recognize Women’s Achievements – Celebrate and showcase the successes of female contributors through various communication channels and events.
- Prepare Mentors to Guide Women – Train mentors to offer culturally sensitive guidance and support to female newcomers in OSS.
- Create and Enforce a Code of Conduct – Establish clear norms for acceptable behavior, explicitly prohibit harassment, and ensure that violations are addressed consistently.
Visualizing Strategies for Inclusion
The following graphic outlines strategies identified by primary studies to mitigate the challenges faced by women in OSS. In the graphic, circles represent challenges and rectangles represent corresponding strategies:
Reference: Trinkenreich, B., Wiese, I., Sarma, A., Gerosa, M. and Steinmacher, I., 2022. Women's participation in open source software: a survey of the literature. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), 31(4), pp.1-37.
For more updates on our initiatives, please sign up for our newsletter, or donate to help us drive greater impact. To learn more about our projects and read inspiring success stories, please visit our blog and explore our diverse playlist topics.