Below is part two of me trying to work through the issue of women in tech, generally and in F/LOSS specifically. It goes with one from yesterday, about optics and marketing.
There's this issue of women in software. Everyone knows it exists. Everyone bemoans the fact that there aren't enough women in math and the hard sciences, never mind women in applied fields like software. It gets worse, of course. It always does. Not only are there not enough women in software, there are even fewer women in F/LOSS. Oh my goodness, no! So not only are there very few women who want to work in software, there are even less who want to effectively volunteer in it. Not that all F/LOSS is volunteer work, but it is a very different dynamic from just working in an office with a defined management structure.
So here are some problems. There's the issue of management structure. When people govern themselves, in the sort of pseudo-libertarian way that F/LOSS does, they tend to think that they're eliminating barriers to entry. Because anyone can look under the hood, contribute, discuss and so on, they think that, well, anyone can contribute. Not so much. The overwhelming majority of people who actively participate in F/LOSS (as far as I can tell from an unscientific survey of various F/LOSS conferences) are white, male and first world. That's not just anyone. That's a privileged group of people who, historically, have had very few barriers to entry in any case. So they think, because they have low to no barriers to entry into the world of F/LOSS, that nobody else has barriers.
Once again, that's crazy talk. There are loads of barriers: time (you need to have enough time to actually do stuff), skill (you need to build up the skill to do the above stuff and building that skill takes time and lots of effort), lexicon (you need to understand the stuff that the group is talking about), courage (you need to believe that your stuff is good enough to be contributed), thick skin (you need to realize that if people criticize your stuff, it's not personal and it's nothing against you) and so on. There are loads more barriers. These are just a few obvious ones.
And then, of course, there's that very problematic problem: impostor syndrome. Lots of women feel like they aren't worthy of note in the software context, that they don't have anything valid or exciting to contribute. And when things are so argumentative and trial by fire, who's to blame them for worrying about that? F/LOSS can be a scary place. It's really easy to feel like an outsider with no one vouching for you. At least when you start a new job, you have the validation imparted by being hired. You, of all the applicants, are the chosen one, the one the employer thinks is best suited to do the job. No such thing in F/LOSS, really. You don't have anyone vouching for you, giving much of a damn about your success. To everyone else already in the community, you're an unproven outsider. And this is where being sensitive to social situations can be a real beast. If you're actually socially sensitive and care what people think of you, going through that trial by fire can be hell. So all of the above contributes to the problem of women in F/LOSS. Add to that the general invalidation of people outside of programming functions and you've got what adds up to a perfect storm of hostility. It's not a specific or targeted hostility, not even a conscious one, but something worse. It's an unthinking, institutionalized hostility. And it does a great job of keeping women out, even if that's not an intended outcome.
There's this issue of women in software. Everyone knows it exists. Everyone bemoans the fact that there aren't enough women in math and the hard sciences, never mind women in applied fields like software. It gets worse, of course. It always does. Not only are there not enough women in software, there are even fewer women in F/LOSS. Oh my goodness, no! So not only are there very few women who want to work in software, there are even less who want to effectively volunteer in it. Not that all F/LOSS is volunteer work, but it is a very different dynamic from just working in an office with a defined management structure.
So here are some problems. There's the issue of management structure. When people govern themselves, in the sort of pseudo-libertarian way that F/LOSS does, they tend to think that they're eliminating barriers to entry. Because anyone can look under the hood, contribute, discuss and so on, they think that, well, anyone can contribute. Not so much. The overwhelming majority of people who actively participate in F/LOSS (as far as I can tell from an unscientific survey of various F/LOSS conferences) are white, male and first world. That's not just anyone. That's a privileged group of people who, historically, have had very few barriers to entry in any case. So they think, because they have low to no barriers to entry into the world of F/LOSS, that nobody else has barriers.
Once again, that's crazy talk. There are loads of barriers: time (you need to have enough time to actually do stuff), skill (you need to build up the skill to do the above stuff and building that skill takes time and lots of effort), lexicon (you need to understand the stuff that the group is talking about), courage (you need to believe that your stuff is good enough to be contributed), thick skin (you need to realize that if people criticize your stuff, it's not personal and it's nothing against you) and so on. There are loads more barriers. These are just a few obvious ones.
And then, of course, there's that very problematic problem: impostor syndrome. Lots of women feel like they aren't worthy of note in the software context, that they don't have anything valid or exciting to contribute. And when things are so argumentative and trial by fire, who's to blame them for worrying about that? F/LOSS can be a scary place. It's really easy to feel like an outsider with no one vouching for you. At least when you start a new job, you have the validation imparted by being hired. You, of all the applicants, are the chosen one, the one the employer thinks is best suited to do the job. No such thing in F/LOSS, really. You don't have anyone vouching for you, giving much of a damn about your success. To everyone else already in the community, you're an unproven outsider. And this is where being sensitive to social situations can be a real beast. If you're actually socially sensitive and care what people think of you, going through that trial by fire can be hell. So all of the above contributes to the problem of women in F/LOSS. Add to that the general invalidation of people outside of programming functions and you've got what adds up to a perfect storm of hostility. It's not a specific or targeted hostility, not even a conscious one, but something worse. It's an unthinking, institutionalized hostility. And it does a great job of keeping women out, even if that's not an intended outcome.
Leave a comment