Open source software and women
Jun 6th, 2007 by Karen
Jessamyn has a great post over at librarian.net about women and open source software projects. My favor quote is where she says
a woman with even a passing competency in this areana …is such an anomaly that people just stop and stare.
This is so true and what goes hand and hand with this is a lack of role models and mentors for future female techies. This lack of role models/mentors is one of the reasons I think open source groups or techie groups in general for women are important. When I got interested in doing web stuff in libraries I really didn’t know many women who worked on that sort of thing. Most of my instructors for technology classes in library school were male and most of the web designers I had worked with or knew were male. However, as I developed in my career I met other women that I could look up to as potential role models and examples. I’ll never forget hearing Darlene Fichter talk at Computers in Libraries about web design and usability testing and thinking “wow, there are other women doing this too”.
Many people thinks I’m exaggerating this point that in a profession that has more women than men that this is a non-issue. However, just take some time and look at the gender of Associate Deans for Technology/Systems at ARL Libraries. How many women are there?
This isn’t to say that male colleagues haven’t played an important role in mentoring me and teaching me new things. Frankly, I don’t know where I would be without some of the guys I’ve met and learned from throughout my career. But many of my initial interactions with these folks started with me being terrified that male colleague was just going to think I was a silly girl and ignore me completely. Perhaps some of this is my own self esteem and life experience (I wasn’t taken seriously by college and high school classmates in math and science), but that doesn’t make the feeling of intimidation any less real.
What makes open source work successful is community. If women don’t feel comfortable participating in and contributing to open source communities, that is a problem.
