LinuxChix Los Angeles

According to the 2006 EU Floss-pols report (Free/Libre/Open Source Software: Policy Support) less than 2% of women are contributors in Open Source software, but in the proprietary software development world women contributors jump to 25%. That’s a big difference.

In the U.S., the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was created under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to enforce Federal anti-discrimination laws. The EEOC defines sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination. Per the EEOC definitions of sexual harassment can include:

• The harasser can be the victim’s supervisor, an agent of the employer, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or a non-employee.
• The victim does not have to be the person harassed but could be anyone affected by the offensive conduct.
• Unlawful sexual harassment may occur without economic injury to or discharge of the victim.

What does this have to do with women’s participation, or lack thereof, in Open Source software? Can you imagine this post by a Debian developer being distributed via a company’s email system to his coworkers? I suspect not. And why? Because it could be used to establish a pattern of sexual harassment and thus fall under EEOC guidelines of sex discrimination.

Businesses, including (most) proprietary software companies, work to prevent and eliminate workplace discrimination, including discrimination based on sex, and generally have policies and procedures in place to deal with allegations of sexual harassment. EEOC guidelines for sexual harassment policy include:

Prevention is the best tool to eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace. Employers are encouraged to take steps necessary to prevent sexual harassment from occurring. They should clearly communicate to employees that sexual harassment will not be tolerated. They can do so by providing sexual harassment training to their employees and by establishing an effective complaint or grievance process and taking immediate and appropriate action when an employee complains.

Now, the ummmmmmmmmmmm part. Remember, proprietary software has 25% woman developers and Open Source software has less then 2% of woman contributors.Think there’s a link?

P.S.
Kudos go out to the Ubuntu development community for establishing a Code of Conduct by which contributors are expected to adhere.