 Hi everyone, welcome to the How to Demonstrate Allyship to the Women in Open Source session. My name is Ratha Jataka, and I'm a Program Manager in the Google Open Source Programs Office. Part of my role is working on DEI in the open source community space and making sure it's more diverse and inclusive for everyone. Hey everyone, my name is Mike Buffano. I also work as a Program Manager in the same org as Ratha at Google. And I've had an opportunity over my many years at Google to work in different capacities in the diversity, equity, and inclusion space. And I'm particularly passionate about engaging in conversations as to how we create welcoming and celebratory environments for everyone at work. We will facilitate this session by reflecting on the experiences of women and main use language referring to gender in the binary of men and women. However, the examples can be applied to a spectrum of gender that includes non-binary folks. There are a multitude of nuanced experiences that we may not be able to adequately address in this session, but we are on the path to creating a more inclusive and welcoming community for all in tech. To give everyone an understanding of how to demonstrate allyship to women, we'll first set the stage, allowing everyone to come together with a basic understanding of concepts we'll be going over. We also thought it would be beneficial to provide some real-world examples to you about the experiences of women in open source. So we sent out a survey and some women felt comfortable enough to share their stories. And lastly, we'll end with some actionable behaviors that folks can take to implement positive change in your work and volunteer contributions. This includes specific behaviors around allyship and revisiting the examples after learning new information and just some thoughts we'd like to share. So we are going to set the stage with a handful of definitions and concepts that are really foundational to any conversation focused on demonstrating allyship. First, it's important for us to define what allyship is here. There are multiple facets to defining allyship. Generally, allyship is defined as acting for equity through the lens of one's own membership in an advantaged group. Another important component is that being an ally is not an identity, but rather an intention. So it's the hope that we are continually expressing a commitment and acts in accordance with this idea. Demonstrating good allyship is not a label that any person can give to oneself. It's a characteristic that is recognized by those two you are an ally. So for example, showing up to a session like this, it's a great step, but it in and of itself does not make you an effective ally in real life situations. We're not going to send you a sticker that you can wear around that's going to say, okay, I'm a good ally now. And lastly, allyship is strengthened by recognizing privilege received from societies injustice and taking responsibility and really diving in and changing patterns. So examples include men working to end sexism, white people working to end racism, and cisgender folks working to end transphobia. So looking at other terms, another important one is microaggression. Microaggressions are just one of many mediums of discrimination. So psychologist, Daryl Wingsu, defines microaggression as brief everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership. So this could be something like asking someone, where are you really from? That's a microaggression when someone may not have a very Anglo sounding name or appearance, saying something like she's a bit bossy as a phrase that could seem as tone policing women. So though microaggressions are subtle and indirect, they leave a person feeling hurt, but in question of whether or not that was their intent, while one microaggression in isolation may not cause over harm or may even be chalked up to a misunderstanding, the accumulation of microaggressions can be overwhelming and reveals common biases at play. Another important term to understand when discussing the different dimensions of identity is intersectionality. Each of us has varied, diverse and complex identities and perspectives. Some of these identities are visible, others are invisible, some of them are majority identities, others aren't, and one person can never capture or know all of them. It's impossible. Dr. Kimberly Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality, the definition of which is, the idea that social identities related systems of oppression, domination or discrimination and multiple group identities intersect to create a whole that is different from the component identities. So originally this term was reflective of the compounding discrimination and oppression faced by women of color that was unique from independently examining communities of women and communities of color by themselves. It's now more broadly used to describe how any set of identities may overlap with varying social impacts. So the theory that because our identities are made up of many categories, we can think of race, class, gender, age, health, et cetera, the more non-majority or underrepresented groups someone typically belongs to, typically the more discrimination they face and the fewer places that they may feel psychologically safe. So the more majority groups that make up someone's identity, the more privileged they will typically have. So for example, when we think about having to deconstruct different systems, women have to deal with sexism and misogyny. Black people have to deal with racism, trans people have to deal with transphobia but a black trans woman will have to deal with racism, sexism and transphobia often at the same time. So they can face misogyny and transphobia in the black community as well as racism and misogyny inside the LGBT community leaving few places to feel psychologically safe. We looked at surveys of the open source industry to see what the number said because we know that metrics are important to open source users and here's what they show. Open source, a large industry that so much technology is built upon does not include many women. From key surveys, one of which was done by GitHub, the data shows the number of women versus men in the industry. From 2002 to 2013 in only about 11 years, the statistic increased only about 9% but this time the survey included non-software contributors likely making up the difference in the numbers. While some of these studies date as far back as 10 years ago, the numbers have not improved by much. The GitHub survey in 2017, just 15 years later only showed a 2% increase in women in open source and even more so with such a small percentage of women in the field and if that 50% having experienced something negative it doesn't create the most welcoming environment for women or set them up for success. So we sent on a survey to collect stories from those who've been affected or observed gender-based microaggressions or harassment within open source communities. Doing this helps us to illustrate that these situations still occur regularly. We had quite a few responses that show both personal and systemic impact that the lack of allyship has had in open source communities. So the first of these examples, I'm frequently the only woman in the room throughout all of my project meetings on any given day. Even if no one makes a direct statement about it this sits on my mind all day and all week and it has for years. The second, my IRC Nick uses a very feminine name. A woman's friend does not, a neutral leaning masculine Nick. I receive multiple random hellos from strange accounts every week. This has never happened to her. We have compared this on and off for years. The pattern has never changed. How do you know when a Linux foundation CFP closes? Because at 11 45 PM on the day of men you haven't spoken to in years or who you barely know will suddenly start flooding your inbox to be on their panel. They suddenly realized there's a gender diversity requirement. I created a plan for a projects working group to share updates with the community each month. It was a requirement that these updates would happen though they rarely did and there was no consequences they didn't. This went on for a while until a male joined the project and suggested to others in leadership, other males that working groups should have monthly updates. Suddenly this was the best idea ever and the leadership rallied around it and made it a priority. The male never pointed out that this was already part of the project governance rather than just run with the praise. Not only was it annoying to have an idea to go ignored until a man suggested it. The leadership learned nothing and things never changed. As an open source maintainer of a largely visible code base on GitHub, I noticed that I got a lot of pushback when I committed alone. This pushback took the form of questioning my implementation choice or prioritizing one bug fix or feature over another. And I noticed my male teammates didn't get the same kind of pushback. I also noticed I got less pushback from community members if I co-committed using the committer field of get comments with another engineer that was male but this was disempowering as a solution. I didn't wanna savior, I wanted an ally. I then tried to create a GitHub username that didn't reveal my gender but that also felt disempowering. I want to live in a world why I'm respected for the work that I do without question and without having to hide who I am to get it. After seeing a handful examples where allyship intervention may have been useful, we'd like to discuss strategies for taking action. We can separate allyship behaviors into three categories, how you show up, ways in which you might have a smaller scale impact and ways in which you might think about having a systemic impact. There are a lot of things we can think about before we enter into a solution that will help to cultivate allyship behaviors. The first is making a conscious effort which may seem like a simple directive but it is a reminder that engaging in allyship behaviors is a choice. Particularly if something doesn't impact you or people close to you, it is easy to just tune out and maintain the status quo. One industry that can draw parallel to open source is that of online gaming. In addition to gender disparities in both environments, the virtual nature of a gaming avatar is not all that dissimilar from someone contributing via an anonymous GitHub user ID. This not only lends to someone making inappropriate comments without consequences, sexism being one example, but also how one might just ignore said comments because it's not their problem. Regularly thinking about issues of gender in your day to day and intervening when necessary will help keep the topic top of mind. When we think about self-awareness, this can take many forms. In one dimension, it can be understanding how your dominant or non-dominant identities impact how you show up to any particular situation. In another, it is understanding that demonstrating appropriate behavior in an open source setting, whether professional or voluntary, is everyone's responsibility. For this reason, it's important to be mindful of intent versus impact. While an action may be made with positive intent or even no intent at all, it can impact each individual quite differently. And at the end of the day, no matter how positive your intent, you will still need to be accountable for your impact. Have a growth mindset, especially when you make a mistake. Just because you have made that mistake once doesn't mean that you are unable to grow and do better. In this vein, keep an eye on your own defensiveness. You will without a doubt continue to make mistakes similar to how we fork code when we want to make improvements upon a project, which can often be met with resistance. Adopting a growth mindset allows you to create a better environment for all those around you. A lot of work in the Allership space can seem reactive. One thing that can help to proactively tune us in to what others in our community are facing is to seek out different perspectives. From the books you read to the people you follow on Twitter, to any other media you consume, what voices are being represented? We can constantly be doing work to educate ourselves about experiences from our own, even if it's simply subscribing to another podcast. Now let's focus on some actions that can be taken by an individual on a smaller scale. Listen to other contributors about their experiences and believe them without derailing by offering alternative explanations or invalidating what they say. So for example, if someone says something like, I feel like this person is leaving really aggressive comments because I'm a woman, rather than saying, really? Well, I know him. He's such a great guy. I've worked with him before. He'd never do that. Say, oh, why do you think that or tell me more? Validate great ideas. Give people credit for the work that is done and especially be mindful of that when it comes to addition franchise groups. Make sure people's ideas are correctly attributed to them and draw attention to their accomplishments. Demonstrate inclusive leadership. Create mechanisms to allow more than the loudest voice to contribute. Call out if you see someone interrupted in meeting, allowing them to finish. Invite people to the table. And by table, we don't just mean meeting room. Take inventory of who is present and engaged and then appropriately close gaps by inviting people and not just as a token representative of one identity to contribute to your projects, events, products. Not only is that the right thing, but research also shows that diversified representation will actually make the final product better. And be inviting all those who are interested in learning more about and practicing open source and encouraging new folks from all backgrounds to join and help open source grow and become more inclusive. And lastly, be mindful of language. Precise language is an important component of effective communication. Don't say girls when you mean women. Avoid words like nag, hysterical, crazy, bossy, aggressive, sweetie, which reinforce harmful stereotypes about women and can be demoralizing. And all of the words I just mentioned are actually research-based and grounded in the experiences of real women today. So calling your colleague sweetie is unfortunately not something of the past as we'd like to believe. And many times people wanna ask, what are a list of words that we shouldn't say? But it isn't really the best approach here. So culture, context, and personal experiences are just a few of many factors that may cause one person to interpret your words differently than another. Helps to be mindful of language, but also to be humble and open to feedback when message comes across in a manner that you didn't intend. This goes as far as the language that we also use in our code and libraries. And an issue that we've launched in the last year or Google is to use inclusive language. Whether at a small team scale or organizationally, there are ways in which we can seek to have a systemic impact. Disrupt work assigned along archaic gender roles or with a distinct lack of representation. This might include creating a clear path and support mechanisms for contributors to become maintainers. Be mindful of setting positive norms, especially if you're a leader or a maintainer. It all starts with having and enforcing a code of conduct. In Ospo at Google, we uphold all of our project partners to implement their code of conducts. An example of this would be to tell your team that you realize you are probably making a lot of mistakes and that you will do your best to notice them and own them in real time, but you welcome input if people have noticed something you may have missed. Those who seek to challenge the process seek innovative ways to change, grow, and improve. This is a way to counteract that this is the way it's always been done mentality. It is important to experiment and take risks by constantly questioning how things are done, identifying the processes that don't work and take actions to fix them. And lastly, generally speak out. Men calling out sexism is often seen as more credible than when done by women themselves. Given that men are part of the out group, it is not perceived as being in self-interest. This runs parallel along other identity dimensions, like why people speaking out against behaviors that perpetuate racism. While we can't provide you with the list of exact right answers for every solution, if your words or behavior could perpetuate inequity for any women, encourage gender stereotypes or cause harm, you should not do or say it. It doesn't matter if the person in question doesn't mind what you said or did. What matters is whether or not any women in the same context or observing would mind and whether you are contributing to an inequitable system. After reviewing some of the specific ways we might demonstrate allyship through our actions, we'd like to revisit some of the scenarios shared by women in open source earlier in the presentation and map them to some of the allyship behaviors we discussed. So looking at this first example of being very apparent, there is only one woman present at all project meetings, we think that this really could be approached by behaviors having a systemic impact. So this situation is an interesting one because it really isn't active, right? That's to say there isn't an overt action or statement where we might point to someone doing the wrong thing. But if we take a zoomed out version or view of the situation, a working group can consider how they might collectively work to make the composition of that group more representative. Even if discomfort wasn't overtly stated by one of the women in the room, it's something that you can take a look at and say, hey, this is a change that we might make here. For the example of securing conference speakers or panelists, we think that this can be influenced by how you show up. When you craft contributions to the broader community with representation in mind from the start, you can avoid having to scramble to meet a requirement or appear as if you are doing the right thing. This can apply to being a panelist yourself. You can commit to participation on the condition that certain benchmarks of representation on that panel are reached. If they aren't, you can inform organizers that you will need to decline. And for this example of how credit was not appropriately attributed to the female contributor, there are behaviors that one might take to have both an individual and a systemic impact. So as an individual who has been working on this project and observing the described situation unfolding, you might speak up in the moment and say something like, I'd actually like to acknowledge the work that's already been done here to set up this requirement and process, citing the colleague who worked on it. In a broader project sense, appropriate attribution and empowerment can be built into the culture of a particular group. So not only might that create a knee-jerk mechanism for leadership to give credit where credit is due, but may also make someone more comfortable speaking up and advocating for themselves because they feel like they have the psychological safety to do so. First, it is crucial to remember that allyship is not linear and it's not easy. You will start, make mistakes, learn and make more mistakes. There is no finish line as we are all continuously learning and growing. The fact that we will never truly finish this work may be frustrating, but know that your improvements are actually making a difference. One thing that should comfort us though is that we already possess the skills needed to demonstrate allyship behaviors, skills like listening, self-awareness, taking and receiving feedback and acknowledgement of and correcting our mistakes are already baked into the most of our day-to-day jobs. It's a matter of paying extra attention to behaviors towards women and other underrepresented groups, being mindful of the unique problems each faces and channeling these skills to be a catalyst for more positive change. Focusing on individuals' behaviors, particularly those who are marginalized and how to navigate systems that were built on racism and sexism does nothing to change these systems. We just wanted to share this quote with you and end on the note that you can make a difference. Thank you.