Please Don't Go -- Increasing Women's Participation in Open Source Software

TL;DR

This paper investigates how open source software communities can effectively increase women's participation by understanding their motivations, designing targeted strategies, and empirically evaluating the impact of these interventions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of women's motivations in OSS and develops tailored attraction and retention strategies based on empirical research.

Findings

Identified key motivations for women to join OSS projects

Developed and implemented targeted strategies to attract women

Empirically evaluated the effectiveness of these strategies

Abstract

Women represent less than 24% of the software development industry and suffer from various types of prejudice and biases. In Open Source Software projects, despite a variety of efforts to increase diversity and multi-gendered participation, women are even more underrepresented (less than 10%). My research focuses on answering the question: How can OSS communities increase women's participation in OSS projects? I will identify the different OSS career pathways, and develop a holistic view of women's motivations to join or leave OSS, along with 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.