The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women's Contribution to Public Code

TL;DR

This study investigates how the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately reduced women's contributions to open source software, especially among hobbyist women, using large-scale commit data and econometric analysis.

Contribution

It provides the first causal analysis of COVID-19's impact on women's open source contributions, highlighting specific subgroup effects.

Findings

COVID-19 reduced women's contributions more than men's

Hobbyist women were particularly affected

The impact was identified using the DID econometric method

Abstract

Despite its promise of openness and inclusiveness, the development of free and open source software (FOSS) remains significantly unbalanced in terms of gender representation among contributors. To assist open source project maintainers and communities in addressing this imbalance, it is crucial to understand the causes of this inequality.In this study, we aim to establish how the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the ability of women to contribute to public code. To do so, we use the Software Heritage archive, which holds the largest dataset of commits to public code, and the difference in differences (DID) methodology from econometrics that enables the derivation of causality from historical data.Our findings show that the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted women's ability to contribute to the development of public code, relatively to men. Further, our observations of specific contributor subgroups indicate that COVID-19 particularly affected women hobbyists, identified using contribution patterns and email address domains.