As a long-time member of the Rust community I am seeing this changing over time, but much more slowly than I'd like. Rust is a very friendly community; we have an actively-enforced code of conduct (which has been in place since the project started >5 years ago); and some people in the community have recently put resources into things like sponsoring women and minorities to go to the first http://rustcamp.com/ conference. The RustCamp CFP had a blind review process to help avoid bias. The Servo team is currently sponsoring an Outreachy intern. And we are definitely looking for more ways to be as welcoming as possible to everyone.
I think this is just a reflection of the proportion of the female contributors in overall open source communities. There's really no reason for the Rust project to do anything "anti-female". Actually I think it is a bit too concerned with diversity.
Then the problem now becomes why there aren't that many female contributors out there. This is just a theory, but I think it is because males' nature make them do free labor to obtain fame. I admit this is purely my experience, but females are more likely to refrain from such labor that does not pay off.
As a long time member of the Rust community (since the beginning of 2013), I don't see much improvement, if at all. I wonder why we have different perception of the issue.
Would more women in tech be good? Of course! However there is some crazy SJW stuff going on at the moment in a lot of projects. People pushing for things like Master/Slave to be renamed to Leader/Follower. Wanting things like man (as in the man command on Linux) renamed to something non-gender-based. I mean fucking come on.
I am all for a more inclusive environment but some things are just stupid and it is getting a little crazy in place.
Looking at their comment history, "trolling" is a safe bet.
And I would assume anybody accusing the man(ual) command of being gendered is being disingenuous until proven otherwise.
(That said, growing up in the American South, I've seen enough disgusting attitudes still persisting that preserving established replicated systems terminology is not a hill I'm in the mood to die on.)
All of those things sound like isolated incidents rather than actual trends. Just using the term "SJW" communicates that you're in a constant state of readiness to be outraged about that stuff. Just treat it like the occasional silly overreaching that it is and be done with it, otherwise it creates an environment where there's no room for "community culture" discussions, ever.
Any time a community increases in diversity, there's a chance for friction. Maybe it's from old-timers with poor social skills who don't realize they've been in a bubble. Maybe it's from new people with their own problems, trying to blame the old culture for their own difficulties fitting in. You know what it's not? A conspiracy or a trend. The only constructive, grown-up thing to do is to try to understand and have empathy for both groups, while pointedly not belonging to either one.
In my experience, any time there's a kerfluffle about someone wanting to rename man(1) or <kerfluffle of your choice>, it's a very small group or an individual getting outraged over something silly, and an equally small group getting outraged over the first group's outrage. It's pointless and meaningless to the vast majority of the group, who just want to move on with their lives and get something done.
If these things seem like they're more common now in open source than they were 10-20 years ago, (a) you'd be mistaken, and (b) if anything, that's just a sign of more people becoming involved, which is a good thing. Let 100 more people in, and chances are one of them will be a little crazy. That doesn't mean they all are, it just goes with the territory.
I would certainly welcome changing master/slave to leader/follower. It's no less clear, and it doesn't associate my software with something I'm deeply against. People might have different reactions to this thing so what's a stupid change to you might be a crucial change to someone else.
(I agree that changing man is a little silly as it's obviously short for manual)
Having few female contributors isn't a sign that Rust is anti female. It could just be that females aren't that interested in Rust, or perhaps more likely that there just aren't as many female developers.
Honestly of all the engineers I've worked with, I think less than 5% have been female.
It is unfortunate, and it is a good question to ask why Rust is attracting so few female contributors.
To assume when asking that question that the project is misogynist is a bit of a stretch, however. It's worth checking the project's policies and behaviors, to make sure it isn't doing anything that provides some kind of bias, but simply starting out by claiming that Rust is "anti-female" goes a bit far.
A few things that I can think of off the top of my head:
Some of the prominent contributions from women don't show up in the list of contributors because they are not directly to the compiler and standard library which are what are tracked in this contributor list, but rather to the broader ecosystem. Julia Evans has written some good blog posts on writing an OS in Rust, that have inspired other people in this space: http://jvns.ca/blog/2014/03/12/the-rust-os-story/. Emily Dunham does some excellent work on Rust infrastructure: http://edunham.net/2015/05/20/open_infrastructure.html There are of course many more that I'm not listing here, but the point is that the Rust community, and even the upstream project, consist of more than just the compiler and standard library, though those contributors are the ones that get credited in a release since that is what is being released.
Rust is still a nascent language; while it is starting to gain traction in the industry, it is not yet broadly adopted, and thus investing a lot of time and energy in joining the project is still a bit of a risk. People who have more social capital and more free time can afford to spend more of that on projects like Rust with a lot of potential but a higher amount of risk. Unfortunately, in our society men tend to have both more social capital, and more free time as domestic labor and child rearing is still seen as primarily women's work.
There are probably a large number of other factors at play. The Rust community that I have seen has been very supportive of women contributing, and has been doing a better job recently of outreach, but there is still probably more that can be done.
Can you provide any suggestions; any place you see the project structure, or contributors, being "anti-female", or any positive action that could be done to increase outreach or increase participation?
10% of the contributers are only known by username. It's not unreasonable to assume that those are disproportionally woman. The real gender ratio could be the same as the gender ratio of the industry overall.
In any case, with just 150 contributers it's hard to make any statistically significant statement.
mbrubeck|10 years ago
As a long-time member of the Rust community I am seeing this changing over time, but much more slowly than I'd like. Rust is a very friendly community; we have an actively-enforced code of conduct (which has been in place since the project started >5 years ago); and some people in the community have recently put resources into things like sponsoring women and minorities to go to the first http://rustcamp.com/ conference. The RustCamp CFP had a blind review process to help avoid bias. The Servo team is currently sponsoring an Outreachy intern. And we are definitely looking for more ways to be as welcoming as possible to everyone.
yokohummer7|10 years ago
Then the problem now becomes why there aren't that many female contributors out there. This is just a theory, but I think it is because males' nature make them do free labor to obtain fame. I admit this is purely my experience, but females are more likely to refrain from such labor that does not pay off.
sanxiyn|10 years ago
kozukumi|10 years ago
Would more women in tech be good? Of course! However there is some crazy SJW stuff going on at the moment in a lot of projects. People pushing for things like Master/Slave to be renamed to Leader/Follower. Wanting things like man (as in the man command on Linux) renamed to something non-gender-based. I mean fucking come on.
I am all for a more inclusive environment but some things are just stupid and it is getting a little crazy in place.
tangent128|10 years ago
And I would assume anybody accusing the man(ual) command of being gendered is being disingenuous until proven otherwise.
(That said, growing up in the American South, I've seen enough disgusting attitudes still persisting that preserving established replicated systems terminology is not a hill I'm in the mood to die on.)
mwfunk|10 years ago
Any time a community increases in diversity, there's a chance for friction. Maybe it's from old-timers with poor social skills who don't realize they've been in a bubble. Maybe it's from new people with their own problems, trying to blame the old culture for their own difficulties fitting in. You know what it's not? A conspiracy or a trend. The only constructive, grown-up thing to do is to try to understand and have empathy for both groups, while pointedly not belonging to either one.
In my experience, any time there's a kerfluffle about someone wanting to rename man(1) or <kerfluffle of your choice>, it's a very small group or an individual getting outraged over something silly, and an equally small group getting outraged over the first group's outrage. It's pointless and meaningless to the vast majority of the group, who just want to move on with their lives and get something done.
If these things seem like they're more common now in open source than they were 10-20 years ago, (a) you'd be mistaken, and (b) if anything, that's just a sign of more people becoming involved, which is a good thing. Let 100 more people in, and chances are one of them will be a little crazy. That doesn't mean they all are, it just goes with the territory.
rhodysurf|10 years ago
bajsejohannes|10 years ago
(I agree that changing man is a little silly as it's obviously short for manual)
rifung|10 years ago
Honestly of all the engineers I've worked with, I think less than 5% have been female.
lambda|10 years ago
To assume when asking that question that the project is misogynist is a bit of a stretch, however. It's worth checking the project's policies and behaviors, to make sure it isn't doing anything that provides some kind of bias, but simply starting out by claiming that Rust is "anti-female" goes a bit far.
A few things that I can think of off the top of my head:
Some of the prominent contributions from women don't show up in the list of contributors because they are not directly to the compiler and standard library which are what are tracked in this contributor list, but rather to the broader ecosystem. Julia Evans has written some good blog posts on writing an OS in Rust, that have inspired other people in this space: http://jvns.ca/blog/2014/03/12/the-rust-os-story/. Emily Dunham does some excellent work on Rust infrastructure: http://edunham.net/2015/05/20/open_infrastructure.html There are of course many more that I'm not listing here, but the point is that the Rust community, and even the upstream project, consist of more than just the compiler and standard library, though those contributors are the ones that get credited in a release since that is what is being released.
Rust is still a nascent language; while it is starting to gain traction in the industry, it is not yet broadly adopted, and thus investing a lot of time and energy in joining the project is still a bit of a risk. People who have more social capital and more free time can afford to spend more of that on projects like Rust with a lot of potential but a higher amount of risk. Unfortunately, in our society men tend to have both more social capital, and more free time as domestic labor and child rearing is still seen as primarily women's work.
There are probably a large number of other factors at play. The Rust community that I have seen has been very supportive of women contributing, and has been doing a better job recently of outreach, but there is still probably more that can be done.
Can you provide any suggestions; any place you see the project structure, or contributors, being "anti-female", or any positive action that could be done to increase outreach or increase participation?
unknown|10 years ago
[deleted]
wongarsu|10 years ago
In any case, with just 150 contributers it's hard to make any statistically significant statement.
sanxiyn|10 years ago
nercury|10 years ago
- Require all contributors to specify their gender; - Do not allow new contributions if they exceed gender quota for release.
Good luck.
ape4|10 years ago
eximius|10 years ago
rewqfdsa|10 years ago
[deleted]
andyl|10 years ago
And yet - epic fail.
What is the reason?
rimantas|10 years ago
[deleted]