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

TL;DR
This paper investigates how open source software communities can effectively increase women's participation by understanding their motivations and developing targeted attraction and retention strategies, evaluated through empirical studies.
Contribution
It offers a comprehensive approach combining empirical research on women's motivations with practical strategies co-designed with the Linux Foundation to boost women's OSS participation.
Findings
Identification of women's motivations and career pathways in OSS
Development of tailored attraction and retention strategies
Empirical evaluation of strategy effectiveness
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.
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
