Gender bias affects contributions to the open source community, according to a paper published Monday. Female programmers’ suggestions for code changes in open source projects — called “pull requests” — were accepted more often than those of their male counterparts when gender was unspecified. However, that changed when the gender of a pull request’s author could be identified. Authors who could be identified by name or a profile picture as women had lower pull request acceptance rates than those who could be identified as men.
Professor Bryan is right. The difference in code acceptance rate is negligible. The real question should ask the following: where are all the female programmers? This technological "boys club", of which I am part, needs to change! Different ways of approaching problems is a valuable resource we should ensure we tap into. Thank you for the interesting article.
Study Finds Gender Bias in Open Source Community
Posted by: John P. Mello Jr. May 2, 2017 11:48 AMGender bias affects contributions to the open source community, according to a paper published Monday. Female programmers’ suggestions for code changes in open source projects — called “pull requests” — were accepted more often than those of their male counterparts when gender was unspecified. However, that changed when the gender of a pull request’s author could be identified. Authors who could be identified by name or a profile picture as women had lower pull request acceptance rates than those who could be identified as men.