WRITTEN BY: JENNA ANDERSON 

A 2016 study by Researchers from California Polytechnic University and North Carolina State University has found evidence for gender bias in the world of open source software development. The study looked at GitHub, which has over 12 million collaborators across 31 million software repositories. They found that women appear to be more competent coders and have their contributions accepted at a higher rate of 78.6% than men at 74.6% acceptance.  Women also tend to have a greater bimodal distribution, being either very successful (>90% acceptance rate) or very unsuccessful (<10%). 

However, the researchers then found that when gender was visible to those judging, codes written by men were accepted at greater rates than women. Women’s acceptance rates were 71.8% when they used gender-neutral profiles, but dropped to 62.5% when their profiles identified them as a woman.

This study finds a clear gender bias against women in open source software development, but it is important to recognize that the study is awaiting peer-review. The gender bias is troubling though, as recent research has suggested that diverse software development teams are more productive than homogenous teams.

The study also looked into why codes written by women were accepted more than those written by men when gender wasn’t a factor. Their first theory was survivorship bias. This theory is that women switch out of science, technology, math and science (STEM) fields at higher rates than men, therefore, the women who remain in the fields may be more capable and better equipped to contribute and to defend their contributions. A 2013 survey found that only 11.2% of the over 2000 open source developers who indicated a gender identified as a woman. The study also suggests self-selection bias as another possible theory; they found that women in open source are more likely to hold Master’s and PhD degrees than men and therefore women may wait until they are more competent in the field before contributing to open source software development.

While it is great to see that the women in open source software development are succeeding, the gender bias and underrepresentation compared to men is troubling. At WWEST our mission is to end this gender bias by increasing awareness of STEM fields to girls and women throughout B.C. and the Yukon   WWEST’s Dr. Shannon recently went on CBC BC Almanac to discuss women in STEM.  Check out the podcast at the 24-minute mark to hear her thoughts.