OpenWorldForum GenderEquality&Diversity

About OWF-GED

OWF-GED (Open World Forum - Gender Equality and Diversity) is a workgroup aiming to set up a track (conference and workshops) within the Open World Forum on the issue of diversity in Free/Libre/Open Source Software communities.

The workgroup is open to anyone willing to participate in elaborating this track.

For the 2010 edition, the workgroup will focus on women in FLOSS communities, as we consider women to be the cornerstone of diversity. For further editions the workgroup shall more broadly consider the diversity issue (younger/older contributors, non-technical profiles...).

2010 Objectives

The conference “Gender Equality and Diversity” will be held during Open World Forum 2010, which is an international event focused on the open source area.

This conference will showcase gender approach from across the Open Source area. Focusing on the need to work across Open Source gender diversity.

Potential topics discussed at the conference might include, but are not limited to, issues like the following :

• Discrimination against women in IT or educational issue ?
• Less women in Open Source than in IT ?

Retro-Planning

• Meetings
  • Every 2 weeks lunch after the program committee until end of February
  • Then maybe every month (tbc)

• Todo's

Category	Task	A	ETA	Check
collaboration tools	mailing list	Alix	end of Week 2	x
	wiki page creation	Alix	end of week 2	x
welcome message: objectives of the conference and of the work group, content, contribution policy…	first draft	Marine	end of week 3
	stabilized version	all	end of feb
Poll	Identification of the targets	all	mid-feb
	Poll conception	Marie	mid-feb
	Tools definition	Véronique + Marine	mid-feb
	Poll realization	all	end of February
	Results collection		end of April
	Results analysis	(all – organization of meetings)	mid-may
Documentation investigation	Investigation of the interesting studies available		end of march
	Meeting for coordination	all	end of march
	Synthesis	Dhunya, Delphine, Julia	mid-may
Program elaboration	plenary session	all	end-may
	workshops	all	end-may
	identification of the speakers/moderators	all	end-may
Communication	conception of the communication tools		end-june
	website		end May
	invitation (speakers)		end May
	invitation (audience)		end June
	identification of communication partners
	diffusion (all)		end June

Poll

The work group will realize a poll in FLOSS communities in order to identify their composition, the part women play and more generally their openness to diversity.

Please visit OWF-GED Poll for further information.

Documentation

• Standing out in the crowd : Kirrily Robert, 2009 July 25 (english)
• The canary in the coal mine : David Eaves, 2009 July 20 (english)
• Flosspols, 2006 (english)

Invitations

Have a look here to the invitation design : [1]

You wonder why women are so few in the Open Source area ? You feel like the situation can change ?

September 30, 2010 :

In the morning, the best experts from all over the world will discuss approaches to explain and improve Gender Diversity from across the Open Source world.

11.15 – 11.30: Diversity Summit Survey presentation

11.30 – 12.00: Round Table : What room is there for women in Open Source ?, with Christina Haralonava ( Gender and FOSS trainer, researcher, Montreal), Margarita Manterola, Debian-Women, running for leader, Bernhard Krieger, anthropologist university of Cambridge, Nnenna Nwakanma, Council Chair, Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa - FOSSFA - Board Observer: Open Source Initiative

12.00 – 12.30: Round Table : Lessons from experience. Some women achieve a high level of responsability in communities, Open Source companies or free programs. How did they manage this ? With Ineke Schop, program manager of NOiV (Netherlands), Clementine Valayer, Senior consultant - former OSOR.eu stakeholder management (Belgium) , Claire Davis, Senior Administrator, Canonical (United Kingdom), Paula Hunter, CEO Coldplex (USA)

In the afternoon you are invited to participate and contribute to improve Diversity in the Open Source world

14.00 – 16.00 : Workshop to be chosen  :

• Diversity in Communities : Creation of a common chart to improve women representation in communities
• Diversity in Companies  : Brainstorming on the ways to foster the female presence in companies: recruitment, training, corporate values

October 1, 2010 :

11.00 - 12:30 : workshop about Education and Gender : Fostering diversity : Does education influence twhether women choose technology as a career and how they get involved in Open Source communities? Are there other factors involved? How do you encourage diversity? This first track of the education session will bring together education and gender researchers to debate the issues.

Minutes from our meetings and conf calls

August, 25th 2010

11:00-11:05 : General Introduction

When we have started organizing the conference and thinking about the issue of the women in the open source world, we felt a bit embarrassed as our aim was not to create a cleavage between men and women but much more to understand why there were so few women in the open source world. We don’t think that women are better than men but we feel somehow that some important values and behavioural traits mostly carried by women (but also by men) are not enough valued in the open source world. That’s why we wanted to know «Why women matter». We saw a kind of paradox. The open source means to us collaboration, openness, sharing spirit. We feel that the open source organization modell has managed to remove the typicall corporate hierarchy and operates on a merit model. But is this model that open? Is everyone really welcome to take part? Is there an underlying open source culture which prevent some people to join?

These are some of the question we are discussing today.

We’ll first have some figures to analyse as objectively as possible the situation with Bernhard Krieger, Social scientist, co-writter of the Flosspoll. Then the roundtable will enable us to subjectively share point of views of women involved in open source communities, companies, administration. Women coming from Ivory Coast, UK, Argentina, Belgium, US, Netherlands, India,.... Gabriele Ruffati will then close the debate as a technical engineer wishing to have more women values represented in open source communities and companies.

11:05-11:20 : Introduction Keynote + Diversity Survey Feedback

• A first analysis of the situation
  • introduction with statistics about the presence of women in scientific jobs
  • main results of the floss polls in 2 006
    • brief description of the orientation and education issues
    • statistics about the women implication in Open Source area
    • main reasons why:
      • psychological barriers : the "einstein" perception- you have to be a genius to contribute - not enough female models - women don't always fit in the geek model
      • some exclusive attitudes: some people don't want to answer to some "stupid" questions, sexist jokes, verbally attacks, dates demands...
      • all contributions are not equally estimated
• update with the 2010 OWF survey

11:20-11:25 : Short Survey in the audience about male & female values

Now, let’s be completely unscientific! I propose you to make a short survey, by raising your hands. I will give you some behavioural traits and you will tell me if you think they are more often carried by women, by men or by both equally.

• Supporting (empathy)
• Problem solving (pragmatism)
• Team building (cohesion spirit)
• Competing (competition spirit)
• Creating (creativity)

11:25-11:55 - What role is there for women in Free and Open Source today?

• To your mind, how do you succeed in open source communities / in open source companies? What skills are being asked for?
• Further to the figures you've heard, how can you explain the underrepresentation of women / female values in the Free / Open Source economy?
• To your mind, why are there so many active groups among open source communities? Why do women need to cluster?
• Is it the same phenomenom everywhere in the world? What place for women in Africa, India, South America, vs Europe/USA?
• Why women matter? What role for women / women values in open source today? What could they bring tomorrow?

11:55 - 12:25 - Lessons from experience, from women who are currently active in Open Source

• What is the rate of women in your working environment? (Jane, Paula)
• What is your role in your environment?
• What is the importance of technology in your working environment?
• Does it make a difference to be a woman at your level of responsibility ? (Clémentine, Ineke, Jane, Paula)
• What would you say to a woman who is interested in joining an open source community / company ?

14:00-16:00 : Community workshop

Creation of a common chart to improve women representation in communities

14:00-16:00 : Company workshop

Brainstorming on the following issues:

• how to find more women with technical background? One solution: being closely linked with communities
• recruitment issues, training issues
• diversity culture and values

March 12th, 2010

some websites to find women speaking:

• http://www.linuxchix.org/chix-who-speak.html

March 5th, 2010

Meeting minute March, 5th

with Marine Soroko, Marie Buhot-Launay, JP Archambault, GL Baron, Medhi Kaneboubi

• Presentation of GL Baron and Medhi Kaneboubi

GL Baron is director of the EDA laboratory at Paris Descartes He is specialized in gender issues in mathematical and technical environment He is currently running a European study in collaboration with Grece, England, Slovaqie, Germany, Italy, Switzerland on gender issues in orientation at school. A poll is currently on process. The university is having a wiki with the bibliography of studies on Gender issues: http://prema-wp2.paris5.sorbonne.fr/wiki/index.php/Accueil Medhi Kaneboubi is working with Mr Baron. He will be helping us on our study: poll realisation, results analysis. Their requirement is to be able to make a publication with the results.

• Methodology for the poll

The poll will be made in 2 parts. A qualitative part will be made through focus group, ie open questions will be asked to 5-6 persons (comunity members, mainly women). We will try to organize the first one at solution linux with the help of Mr Baron's team. Another one could be held during the RMLL or Linux Tag in Germany. (If you have other ideas, please tell us).

• A quantitative part will be held through an online poll. This poll is dedicated to comunity members / CEO of FLOSS companies.

This objective is to have this poll online by the end of the month. To do so we need:

1. to finalize the questions before the end of next week. A meeting is scheduled next friday, the 12th to do so
2. to put a test version online --> Marine
3. to test it with 10 people at solution linux (both comunity members and FLOSS CEOs)--> who is available...
4. to analyse the results with the help of Medhi
5. to have the final version online by the end of the month

• This poll will stay online around 2-3 month. We still have to define how many answers we want to have (men/women – Europe/US/rest of world)

Each of us will be in charge of sending the link to its network in order to get as many answers as possible.

• Brainstorming for the speakers

NB: They were only 4 of us. Therefore we need more input from the others project members. Names are to be suggested via the mailing-list.

Feb 12th, 2010

With: Marine Soroko, JP Archambault, Pascale Luciani-Boyer, Marie Buhot-Launay, Alix Cazenave

• Pascale Luciani-Boyer:Doctorat Sciences Biolotechnologique,business school, mayor St Maur des Fossés in charge of IT
• Alix Cazenave, in charge of public relations, APRIL,
• Marine Soroko, CEO of an open source company, not technophile at the begining
• JP Archamault, open source coordinator in the CNRP (centre national de ressources pédagogiques)

• People who could help us:
  • Catherine Proccacian, Senateur,
  • Claudie Bertino, responsible of the Paris Region Resource Center
  • Georges Louis Baron, Paris 5 teacher, led a study on gender in IT last year

• Question:
  • what is the consequence of online collaboration on discrimination - it should prevent it and yet...
    • less social requirements: because no need of mixity as people work remote
    • less involvment as you can quit whenever you want
  • is the meritocracy and the way its work an obstacle in the involvment of women? why?
  • responsability and evolution in the hierarchy comes from the aknowledgement of the contribution. Do women have a problem in promoting their work?
  • is the collaborative work more appealing to men? we would have thought that it is not the case - Men are more interested by power, women by the realisation of a project
  • is the organization of open source comunities really open with its current profesionalization (more hierarchy)?
  • problem of free time for women
  • does the problem come from the technicity of the open source or other causes?
  • do the geek have a bad behavior with girls?

• idea: test a question on a community made by a feminine / masculine pseudo --> Alix will ask Alina, and a boy with a feminine pseudo

January 29th, 2010: follow-up

With: Alix Cazenave, Marie Buhot-Launay, Marine Soroko, Delphine, Julia

Decisions:

• Marine will invite Mrs Pascale Luciani and Mr George Louis Baron to our working groug
• next meeting scheduled on Feb, 12 from 10:00 to 12:00 am at the ARD (3 rue des saussaies, 75008 Paris
• in the next 2 weeks:
  • Marine will work on the welcoming message - (with the help of every one feeling inspire)
  • Each participant will write the questions he/she feels important to ask for the poll on the new page "poll" added to the wiki - the target of the polls
  • Each participant will upload the interesting studies on the wiki

January 13th, 2010: Workgroup foundation meeting

With: Alix Cazenave, Marie Buhot-Launay, Marine Soroko, Véronique Torner

Name to be defined: (brainstorming)
Gender Equality and Diversity
Gender Summit
Social Summit
Open Women conference at the OWF

Date OWF : Sept 29 to Oct 2
Day dedicated to “Open Society”

Debate on the topics

Questions:

• is there a discrimination against women in IT or a problem with less women studying IT?
• Difference between IT and floss: why?
  • Problem of time invested in work?
  • Because it is more technical?
  • Pb of meritocracy?
  • Technical (code) contributions are more valued than non technical - but still essential - contributions where we will find more women (design, documentation…)
  • And yet, women are more attracted by team work than men
  • Question: who is more contributing to Wikipedia?
• more women in IT in developing countries: Maghreb, India – maybe because IT is considered as a means of emancipation

Why?
education
stereotypes lead to the creation of a men's world where the lack of diversity tends to encourage the development of a mono-culture. Few women -> less women (problem of critical mass)

Organization of the conference

Format

Format studied = 1 day

• Morning: conference / round table
• Lunch: networking with other tracks (human factors, CIO summit)
• Afternoon: workshops

Content

diagnosis of the situation

• OWF Polls results
• testimony from a CIO (man or woman)
• synthesis of different studies

best practices

• Women association among communities (ex Ubutuntu women, Debian Women)
• Women association in IT: Girls in Tech, Webgirls, Cyberelles
• Policies made by trade association (Syntec, Intellect, Bitkom…),
• Government? (European Commission? Others?)
  

1. In communities:
   1. Mozilla: more consideration to non technical contribution
   2. Ubuntu: openness to feed-back from the contributors (even non technical), users - openness to non technical profiles
2. In companies:
   1. testimony from companies with mixed teams (added value: more team work on projects, with clients)
   2. Women Equity

proposed solutions

• more consideration for non technical contributions
• to provide all pupils with IT education at school
• more openness from communities
• debate: quotas or not quotas?

Workshops: to be defined later

More open to other forms of discrimination

Retro-Planning

• Meetings
  • Every 2 weeks lunch after the program committee until end of February
  • Then maybe every month (tbc)

• collaboration tools
  • diffusion list (Alix) end of Week 2
  • wiki page creation (Alix) end of week 2

• welcome message: objectives of the conference, objectives of the work group, content, contribution policy…
  • first draft (Marine) end of week 3
  • stabilized version (all) end of feb

• Poll:
  • Identification of the targets (all) mid-feb
  • Poll conception (Marie) mid-feb
  • Tools definition (Véronique + Marine) mid-feb
  • Poll realization (all) end of February
  • Poll results end of April
  • Results analysis (all – organization of meetings) mid-may

• Documentation investigation
  • Investigation of the interesting studies available end of march
  • Meeting for coordination end of march
  • Synthesis (Dhunya, Delphine, Julia) mid-may

• identification of the program (all) end-may
  • plenary session
  • workshops
  • identification of the speakers / moderators

• communication
  • conception of the communication tools end-june
  • website end-may
  • invitation (speakers) end-may
  • invitation (audience) end-june
  • identification of the communication partners
  • diffusion (all) end-june

Bibliography

Fichier:Dev LL.pdf Fichier:Dev communautes LL.pdf Fichier:Free soft.pdf Sociability & Social Control