 Well, hello world So last year on the liver office conference in Denmark, I had a lightning talk so I had exactly two minutes to present my subversive feminist agenda and In the beginning of the lightning talk I asked everyone I prepared some small physical exercise for the people who were present and I asked everyone who it identifies himself as a white male to stand up What do you think happened? Well everybody but for one person in the room stood up and then one that's one person didn't stand up just because he happened to be Asian and when this talk was over Lear Kaplan our contributed from Israel came to me and said You know what? I think you should you should make this a mainline talk and I said Hmm, I don't think so it would it but I would have nothing like this lightning talk was just enough And I would have nothing to talk about in the mainline talk So I don't think it's such a brilliant idea But then some amazing things started happening in the liberal office community and the first of them The first of them Was that Gulshak O'Shea our amazing developer from Turkey? Convinced all her girlfriends to start contributing to liberal office And this is how Turkish the liberal office developed the community looks like and then Our amazing TDF members appointed a chairwoman of the board There she is. I think she sits somewhere here And the next day I took to IRC and I was like Wow, this is this is awesome. The TDF members are feminists. They appointed the chairwoman of the board and then our amazing marketing team came and Made this amazing blog post for the International Women's Day kind of highlight highlighting all the female TDF members and The achievements and actually encouraging more women to to apply for TDF membership and to have their contribution somehow recognized so I thought now time has come to Really make this a mainline talk and that's why I'm here and let's see if I will have something to talk about for the whole 20 minutes So what's this gonna be about? So first we are gonna have a look at some boring numbers How do we stand? How do we compare to the other communities where where the women and liberal office are? What's the percentage what they're doing? then We will I will try to somehow ask the question Why does this all really matter like why should we care? Why is the gender diversity such a good thing and Then we will have a look at some some common problems that That women face in the free software development Some of those are like those those problems kind of overlap like with women in science Women in technology what not and they are by no means specific to liberal office But I will try to somehow show some solutions or some Suggestive approaches like we impact because because we can't go and fix the world But we can make definitely some things in our community happen that can improve the the dire state of the things So the numbers and those those numbers are kind of as I realized that that's kind of hard to get Because like for the for the for the TDF membership. Yes We do track the gender of the person who applies for the membership But the kid for example doesn't have any gender button like because the kid doesn't care what gender you are and it's even more It's even worse with the contributors who change the wiki because they use nicknames So at least with the kid comments You can have a look at the name and if somebody's name is Michael or Philip then you probably know that this is not a woman so you can somehow guess like What what the what the numbers are there, but like no way you can you can guess the nick of a person who contributes to wiki and the their gender so Yes, so how how does it look like according to floss survey? That surveyed like some some large amount of free and open source software communities There's some 11% of women contributing to free and open source software It's actually the number who went quite up because when they did the same survey in 2006 it was just one and a half percent and Then the chart the other chart that's I Was I wasn't sure like what to do because like it would be best like to have the comparison if the data came from the same Sorts, but they don't it was just impossible to to find some same or the related sources like to to track the involvement of women and close source and open source software so that some those are some US data from the National Center for Women in Technology in the United States and There the percentage of Employees who work for tech companies is up to 25 27 percent of women However, I have some reservations towards this data because if you ask a high-tech company to to report the number of the female Stuff, what are they going to do? They're gonna include all the I don't know human resources and receptionist and Secretaries and whatnot. It's hardly ever like the number they report It's hardly ever limited to their to their stuff that is actually technical and the next that I have is that I I Took the liberal fiscal repository Actually actually look at the numbers there At some points it was pretty funny because I I was not sure about some some ethnic names Not from European space So I had to ask some my my indian G so student is this a male name is this a female name? what about this name and So there was like as as of yesterday There's been some bit more of a thousand of people who ever committed go to liberal office 1049 to be exact and out of three I was able to identify 33 as a woman So with some some 3% of total and finally the TDF members Last year we had 200 210 members out of which 20 were women this year That's the chart over there The numbers went to be down because some people did not extend the membership So both numbers of all members as well as number of women So now it's on something between seven and eight percent of TDF members are actually women and Out of important question Why is this so important? Why should we care? Why should we do anything to to increase the Number of or to increase the gender diversity in our community Well Study after study Somehow proves that the more diverse team the better it works. It leads to better decision-making like Taking different inputs from different sources and the needs to compromise and Also to to more more innovation and more creativity and somehow the resulting product is if it matches like if the if the The team that develops a product is diverse It's very likely that the resulting product will match the different needs of different groups and And such product Somehow then attracts the wider pool of well in commercial software Why the pool of clients open-source software it can attract why the pool of contributors and the users Because if I if I see that people who work on particular particular product particular software I look at them and I see all those are people like me. So perhaps When they were working on on their product like developing the software I'm not going to use if I see the members of my group represented among the developers and the contributors it is likely they They made a product that will match my needs and last but not least oh Exclude it like women make some 50% of population Which is that which is a huge talent pool? So it would be just nonsense to somehow exclude this group from active participation Or not to do more to or like put it differently not to do more not to strive to include this wide pool of talent and Of course like the diverse diverse set of colleagues co-workers people I interact with Somehow creates a work better better atmosphere in the workplace but so We've seen the numbers and when I saw the reasons like why why should be somehow How how we should benefit from the diversity and now the questions we should I'll ask ourselves Is this is this really so that the the women are acted like somehow Disinterested they just don't contribute because they don't want to or they have different interests Or is there is there something that's holding them back? Why why are they left behind? I'm I will try to outline some some problems And perhaps suggest some solutions to couple of them Problem number one Is something I call the confidence gap? Which is in General women tend to have much lower self-confidence in comparison with man And this is particularly true in the technical fields in the science technology engineering can map This is what the stem stem acronym stands for Sometimes I wonder if there's some some gene For confidence that sits on the y chromosome only But I think it's something like I don't think so and it must be something else and One part of the problem is that in our culture Computers or anything technical? It's heavily marketed marketing of that is heavily targeted to men If you if you pay attention in the history class You perhaps know that the first computers the operators of the first computers were women and If you look at some numbers you see that like the involvement of women of In computer science actually goes down over the time and of course everybody every now But he knows the the rear admiral mrs. Grace hopper Which invented the term bug and debugging? So in the past the computers It was it was not considered to be men's job to work with the computers This has heavily changed in the end of 70s beginning of 80s when the computers like heavily started to be marketed and targeted at men and As a result if you if you're a parent it perhaps doesn't even occur to you if you have a daughter That you could perhaps buy her a computer or somehow motivate her to play with the computer unlike if he if you have a son and This is then somehow somehow enforced I've heard all of all of those statements. I didn't make any any one of them that I heard all of them myself And it's then somehow enforced later at school That the assumptions of the teachers and of the educators are that that girls have somehow less aptitude in technology and in computers and they they need to be explained things twice to get them and Yeah, well this code is so bad It must have been written by a woman and and then well, I don't know why the last statement I came to some trade fair to speak at the the software I was developing and after after that talk a customer came to me and asked me if I was really a software engineer Because he just considered me. He looked at me and he said you're too pretty to be software engineer and a consequence of all this is That if there is some some technology job Women due to lower self-confidence and due to being told that no way the computers are for them and no way They can be any good at this is that even if there are jobs and interships offered they don't apply and The same holds true for for the for the open source software They don't contribute because they believe they contributions simply wouldn't be good enough. I Can select some personal experience. I had the There was a female G soc student this year And I was mentoring her earlier for for a school project and after the school project was over. I asked her Why don't you why don't you what what about you go and try try G soc try applying for the G soc and she said I don't think I'm no enough to do that I don't think I would be able to do that and for three months She has been contributing code to liberal office patch after patch the code was actually of pretty good quality So something she has been doing for three months and she still thought did not believe that she can actually do this It's there. So some things we can do about this confidence gap There is a thing run by I think software freedom conservancy previously known foundation It's a special outreach program targeted that women so it works Pretty similar fashion than G soc The so the women take some internship I think it takes some some three or four months where they actually work on some open source project and get paid for their Contributions, they are assigned to mentor who somehow. Yeah, well guides. They were through the project I'm only only women and transgender people are eligible to apply to this project This is this can be somehow I Can see how this can be encouraging that some some women can feel safer in this environment because they don't feel like they're competing against men and Somehow don't feel inferior are like when they think like all those guys like they know much more than I and I can't really compare another important feature like something we can do is Somehow to to make the female role models within the community Visible and to actually have some pool of female mantis available and So and for the for the for the events and for the heckfest and for the conferences if I if I look at the Speakers list for the I don't know how many past LibreOffice conferences It used to be like all male roster Like they are simply like there was simply no woman or just one woman or something like this and if the conference Organizes complain and they say oh well We would like to have some female speakers, but they just don't go and don't apply It's it's important to be aware of this confidence gap And I can I can say that from my tell that from my own experience did I simply Thought like okay, I will I could perhaps talk at first time or somewhere But I don't think I have much to say so I didn't apply and Then I went to foster them and I went to somebody else's talk and I thought oh I could I could I could talk about These things and even even much more and the guy who had to hurt the talk had the confidence and he actually Sent in the paper and I didn't because I thought like I can't do that and I think it's important that the people who organize conferences and The hacker events are actually aware of this and they actively seek out the female speakers and the female Contributors and actually invite them to speak at the conferences And once we got over the confidence gap. There is something called second shift. I Choose this picture of Rosie The river to because like During the Second World War the women massively entered the workforce so They were Getting paid for their jobs But somehow relieving them of their other duties, especially like domestic chores and The child care or care taking responsibilities wasn't somehow part of the deal So and I was born here in Czechoslovakia and it was like that During the Communism everybody had to be every adult person had to be employed full-time It wasn't sad that everybody also has to work, but they had to be employed and And when the women can go home from their first shift at job the second shift started because they had to do the shopping and Take care of the kids cook the dinner clean up do the ironing and so on while Well the men's time After work it belongs to them. They're free to do whatever they want with their time and This is frequently no longer the case, but I have to say Like it's it's changing but rather slowly and in some cultures. This is not changing at all It's it's still the same way Anybody ever heard of leaky pipeline? So this is some kind of nice chart It's about women in science, but I think we can we can apply we can extend this argument to well, for example computer science So once we somehow stuff enough women into the pipeline somehow entering Technology or mathematics or computer science field something strange starts to happen after a while Especially after like the women get married They leave the field. They just don't stay That that's why it's called leaky pipeline while while the man somehow Proceeds to the pipeline the women slowly over the time start to drop out and This is this is what's happening to to older women married women with the families in open source as well as I say like they and And it's specially true in in free and open source because because this is usually something you do in your free time and As I said like the men's free time belongs to him While a woman's free time is frequently filled with various different responsibilities and if you don't believe me just Think about how how many women have you seen for example in the local tennis club or a golf club? so that I don't mention some some heavily masculine activities and Part of the problem is that events like this Conferences or heck first a very unfriendly to people that have actually families So well, I came to the to the organizers of the liberal fist conference in Denmark last year I introduced my cellophane is like this is this is my son and you guys happen to have any child care here and I got a blank stare and The organizer apologized and he said oh we didn't think about that Of course, they don't think about it because people usually don't bring their children to the hacker events but And it's not like I mean people like I Get to that And it's it's not only it's not only about women. It's also about the man So how to how to deal with this one? Like the women somehow not having enough of free time to dedicate to open source. So an obvious solution is to Provide some jobs Involving free and open source to women So it's not their third shift after first shift in the job and second shift at home Something that have barely any time to do. It's actually their first ship. It will be their day job This is very effective way how to get more women into open source and again to overcome the confidence gap It is it is important not to wait until the women apply because due to confidence kept they often don't But to actively reach out for them and this this statement I quoted verbatim from from the website Advertising the jobs for the certain famous Free and open source software company is anyone's guess which company might that be So I'm it's not legal to say that Fair enough. Yes. You see they're admitting they're aware of the sad state of affairs in the technology Sector and they're gonna prefer provided that to two equally qualified applicants They're gonna prefer the female one And it's it's called up systems So now you can send the lawyers after them and I also wanted to highlight The the events that actually became family friendly that actually offer some extended and some very very nice childcare one of them is depth conf of Gwadek and and Frostcon that even offered some some legal mind storms Games for the for the bigger kids and the third part of the problem I'm not gonna discuss this in the great length because I don't have that much time Some things that tend to happen in majority male environment That like if the majority somehow doesn't realize that those things are somehow Offputting to the minority members they will keep happening. I So I'm I've been a G segment for for couple of years by now So especially in the in the community application period I frequently interact with the students and This year a very curious thing happened to me There was a student applying for my particular project. I was chatting with him and then I thought Wait Is this guy flirting with me and that was indeed the case and I'm an old lady So I'm I'm able to shrug it off or to laugh it off But then I imagine 25 years old myself in that shoes in those shoes and I was not laughing so much anymore Then I may imagine some other woman on my place That would be from some different culture where some Barriers or relationship between genders are much less liberal than here in Europe and I was not laughing at all And I was asking myself a question. How how prepared are we to deal with events like this? And I had to answer I don't know so Well Couple of other issues in this area like that's that's the invisibility That well people can say because like simply The women are in such minority that like some people might tend to think that there are no women contributing to liberal office some Unwanted unwanted attention. So the female contributed somehow attracts attention just because she's female and Then some I Observe that in the liberal office community, but like everywhere as well The women are somehow Indirectly channeled into the positions that are somehow non-technical People tend to think all women tend to they are not interested in contributing code They might do marketing or Elton and and as a result or it's the other way around out. I don't know Those are somehow so the code contributors are some sort of aristocracy There's somehow rule the project and make the important decisions and non-code contributors are somehow considered to be second-class citizens It's correlates I I'm not saying this dislike. There's some cause and effect There's a strong correlation between like those type of contributions that are considered somehow to be second-class and with how many women actually do them and Sadly, I have no solutions To those issues, but if you're interested in in an hour Well after after Jonas talk after mine You can come to this very room and we will have a workshop about the diversity and how to make our community more inclusive and that's all from my side and I have some unfortunately only two minutes for the questions