I just want to ask, are we looking at this statistic in the wrong way:
"Only about 1.5% of the people involved in open source are women, leaving us terribly underrepresented. In the Drupal world, we're up to a whopping 7% 10%, which only gets us to awfully unrepresented. ;) "
Yesterday, in Dublin, Ireland- we held what we called "The BIGGEST Drupal Event in Ireland- EVER"... it was a resounding success. 74 people signed up, and 73 attended! We were shocked and amazed. We even had to re-jig the schedule a bit to respond to the unexpected crowd make-up... which leads me to an interesting point.
The day before the event, myself, Stella Power and Deirdre Lawless from DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology which generously hosted our event for free) met to survey the plans and schedule one last time. I made a point of remarking that it was interesting that three women were involved in planning the event. It was on my mind because I had seen a post by a web developer here in Ireland, Sabrina Dent, criticizing the "Future of Web Apps" events. "FOWA: The Future Looks Mighty Male" Stats from her blog post http://www.sabrinadent.com/2008/11/14/fowa-the-future-looks-mighty-male/
* FOWA Dublin: 8 Male, 1 Female.
* FOWA Miami: 10 Male, 0 Female.
* FOWD NYC: 17 Male, 1 Female.
So the gender balance was on my mind... I thought it was remarkable that I was speaking with a woman who lectures in computing (Deirdre), and another woman who is a stellar software developer (Stella) and we were planning an event to advocate open source software. On the day, I wasn't the only one who noticed it.
I had several conversations about the make-up of the attendees- and of course the fact it was organized by 3 women.
One fella who attended- he works in the Dept of Social Welfare- was intensely asking of other attendees: "WHAT is different about Drupal? WHAT is going on here?" He really wanted to figure it out. He was amazed at what he called "all the grey hairs" in the audience. He was impressed by the percentage of women. He said he'd been at tech events recently- and it was all young guys. Looking around, I had to agree.. it was different.
Alan Burke (a member of our Drupal Ireland group) told him it may have had to do with the roots of Drupal in not-for-profits or education. I also mentioned DrupalChix and Webchick- that the groups and role models were there in the community.
What do you think?
If the rest of open source is 1% and Drupal is 10%... then... what exactly are we doing differently?
Comments
Rest are not caring about
Rest are not caring about the gender differences. But here, a lady is leading and there is special group for Drupal girls. That gives a boost. Keep it up! Ladies..
Why so much interest?
First off my humble apologies for the terribly put gender questions on the day. I must have alienated most attendees but it was knee jerk reaction to the success of the gathering.
Backing away from gender & looking again, why such a big crowd? I wonder is it because people can USE Drupal. Is it like when people started to USE html instead of SGML. The easier things became, more people USED it. Are we seeing more people being empowered to develop their own area of interest (e.g. light box & the crafters)? Is the gender increase a by-product of the ease of use Drupal brings to the party?
Being new to this neck of the woods I find Drupal much easier than Plone. I find PHP easier than Perl Ruby Python etc. I am not saying its better but I can get along just fine under my own steam. PHP is all over the web and available for the "ordinary person in the street".
Did I see more ordinary people being and wishing to be empowered by Drupal to do their own CMS thing on the web?
My best wishes to the female Druplers. I hope you grow quickly in number as your contributions will only be to the benefit for all.
Kind regards
Bren
hello brendan! thanks for
hello brendan! thanks for piping in! i didn't want to "out" you as that guy who mentioned the gender difference. it was a good observation and worth mentioning here in this forum. thanks for joining in the conversation!
It's worth pondering...
At BlogHer's open spaces event, I did my typical song and dance (complete with very excited hand gestures) about how AWESOME open source was and how EVERYONE should get involved because it's SUCH a great opportunity to improve your technical skills, meet friends and interact with people from around the world, and sometimes even get a job directly, etc. You know, the usual spiel where you can't get me to shut up for 2 hours. :D
This was met by some skepticism, though, particularly from the organizer of said event. I'm not sure if this was based on direct experience or just based on the stereotype that open source communities are unfriendly to women.
There was an interesting discussion the other week at http://realtech.burningbird.net/web/writing/another-wit-virginia-addison.... The posters there also imply there's something about the Drupal project specifically that creates an environment open and friendly to women, and that this trait does NOT necessarily carry over in other projects. I also obviously was not involved in the Drupal community before I actually was :P, so it's possible things used to be different. But I've only been met with absolute respect by 99% of the people here though, and that 1% that says something sexist/homophobic normally gets their face chewed off by everyone else before I even have the chance to read to the end of the comment. :D
I recognize though that I had a lot of advantages coming into the Drupal community as a Summer of Code student that most other new people don't -- for example, the community "knew" who I was ahead of time, and there was a mandate to be nice to SoC students lest the Drupal project face the Wrath of Google ;) -- so it's really great to see other people taking notice of this diversity, welcoming, and openness that originally got me hooked and continues to keep me obsessed. ;) It's an awesome thing to be part of.
Have any of you been involved in other open source projects, to talk about how the communities compare?
Btw, we can totally change that mission statement to whatever you want. :) Feel free to open another thread to ask for suggestions.
Oh, in reference to the actual *question*...
Heh. ;)
"If the rest of open source is 1% and Drupal is 10%... then... what exactly are we doing differently?"
I think there are a few things going on:
1. There is a single person that's the "face" of the Drupal project's leadership, and that person is Dries. Dries has repeatedly stated how important the mentor role is, and how managing the community of Drupal is a more important job than managing the code. (paraphrasing) Even if there is a token jerkwad on the mailing lists or forums, it's very clear that that person doesn't reflect the larger Drupal community, because Dries is that voice and he is decidedly not a jerkwad. ;)
2. There are some amazing women in some pretty prolific roles in the Drupal community. Looking at http://groups.drupal.org/og/users/9564/faces reveals the nicknames and faces of women who are doing everything from community organizing, to running companies, to theming and design, to tweaking with low-level guts of technology, to authoring books, to educating others, supporting users, leading quality assurance efforts, and more. Women aren't "pigeonholed" into one specific role here; we do everything, and are encouraged to do so. I think it makes it easier for some women to join a community if they can see their own passions reflected in the women who are already part of the community and doing awesome things.
3.
I'm not sure. I was just told you should always have 3 things in a list. ;)Oh, I thought of 3. And now I'll quit spamming this poor thread! ;)The Drupal community also has a very strong focus on valuing all types of contributions, not just code. If you can spot a grammar error in a piece of documentation, or you can test out some feature on Windows Vista, or if you can write up a bug report or feature request that makes sense, or help another user with the same problem that blocked you, that is considered extremely valuable. The community on the whole is very encouraging of new contributors, and this probably has a lot to do with Dries's continual stressing of the mentor role we each have.