The Gender Gap in Open Source - A Metadata Problem and Its Solutions

Explore the critical issue of gender disparity in open source contributions through this insightful 39-minute conference talk. Delve into recent analyses revealing that less than 6% of open source contributions come from women, and challenge common misconceptions about the reasons behind this gap. Examine compelling data from over 3 million pull requests demonstrating how blind reviews significantly increase the acceptance rate of women's contributions. Uncover the impact of implicit bias when gender-identifiable information is present during the review process. Learn about practical solutions to remove implicit bias from development decision-making, focusing on restructuring contributor models and metadata usage. Gain valuable insights on how both projects and individuals can work towards making open source truly inclusive and accessible to all developers, regardless of gender.

The Gender Gap in Open Source is a Metadata Problem (and we can fix it) - Sal Kimmich, Sonatype