The gender gap is a significant concern facing the software industry as the development becomes more geographically distributed. Widely shared reports indicate that gender differences may be specific to each region. However, how complete can these reports be with little to no research reflective of the Open Source Software (OSS) process and communities software is now commonly developed in? Our study presents a multi-region geographical analysis of gender inclusion on GitHub. This mixed-methods approach includes quantitatively investigating differences in gender inclusion in projects across geographic regions and investigate these trends over time using data from contributions to 21,456 project repositories. We also qualitatively understand the unique experiences of developers contributing to these projects through a survey that is strategically targeted to developers in various regions worldwide. Our findings indicate that gender diversity is low across all parts of the world, with no substantial difference across regions. However, there has been statistically significant improvement in diversity worldwide since 2014, with certain regions such as Africa improving at faster pace. We also find that most motivations and barriers to contributions (e.g., lack of resources to contribute and poor working environment) were shared across regions, however, some insightful differences, such as how to make projects more inclusive, did arise. From these findings, we derive and present implications for tools that can foster inclusion in open source software communities and empower contributions from everyone, everywhere.
翻译:随着发展在地理上更加分散,软件行业面临的性别差距是一个重大关切问题。广泛共享的报告表明,性别差异可能是每个区域特有的。然而,这些报告的完成程度如何,对开放源码软件(OSS)进程和社群软件的研究往往没有反映?我们的研究对GitHub的性别包容情况进行了多区域的地理分析。这种混合方法包括从数量上调查各个地理区域项目在性别包容方面的差异,并利用21 456个项目储存库提供的数据调查这些趋势。我们还从质量上理解开发商通过对世界各地区开发商进行战略性调查为这些项目作出贡献的独特经验。我们的研究结果表明,世界各地性别多样化程度很低,各区域之间没有重大差异。然而,自2014年以来,世界范围多样性有了显著的改善,非洲等某些地区正在以更快的速度改善。我们还发现,各区域分享了大部分促进贡献的动机和障碍(例如,缺乏资源来作出贡献和工作环境不佳)。然而,我们从一些深刻的差别中了解到,例如如何使项目在各地的开发者具有更大的包容性,我们从所有地方产生这种包容性的影响。从这些研究结果中可以发现,如何使每个社区都具有更大的包容性。