Open Source Summit North America 2018

Gender inclusiveness in software companies is receiving a lot of attention these days, but it overlooks a potentially critical factor: software itself. Research into how individual differences cluster by gender shows that males and females often work differently with software for problem-solving, such as when trying to contribute to OSS communities.

In this talk, Dr. Sarma will describe a  field-tested method based on five facets of statistical gender differences in preferred cognitive styles, and will then present what the method reveals about Open-Source Software tools and infrastructure — namely that the tools themselves are deeply implicated in gender disparities in OSS communities. The talk will close with concrete ways in which the OSS community can get involved in OSS mentoring research, get involved in removing gender biases from software that OSS produces, and more.