Females in Open Source

[carobotero]

A friend suggest I should look at this web page where a student is doing a study on women in the Open Source movement. She is runing a survey and posting results, is there a women here willing to take the survey? I find interesting to take a look at a strongly male endevour as this one seen through the eyes of women and I wonder how do these women find their role in this particular community?.

The issue called my attention since a friend got involved in a research about the Free Software community in Colombia also from a gender point of view and I read some of her findings that were published in the Scripta journal (sorry spanish), you might find interesting too.

The article abstract:

"Following a gender perspective, the article presents the social dynamics that characterize the Free/Open Source Software Community in general, and emphasizing in the local community in Colombia. The document questions the freedom paradigm that orients these technological developments, pointing out that they are gendered. It states that this genderization of FLOSS, shapes different social exclusions in the FLOSS Community, “invisibilizing” the role of women within it."

[Michel Bauwens]

if you send me an email about it, I'll forward it to a few more people,

Michel