Some time ago, I had contacted Meike Reichle, who had been recommended to me as a active open source participant (Debian) as well as informed feminist, on what she thought about the interplay of peer production, more specifically free and open source software development, and the role of women in it. After she read my own essay, I received a thoughtful reply, which Meike then further elaborated into a mini-essay which she published on her site. It is really worth reading, since it is written from the inside, as a ‘peer’ inside the movement, an open inquiry into the causes of gender imbalance in the movement. The essay ends with concrete suggestions and is quite optimistic about the evolution in the future. It comes in 2 versions, a longer one and a ‘stripped-off print version’. Since it is indeed quite long, I’m just quoting from the introduction, to give you a taste of what is in it.
“In this text I’ll look at P2P communities mainly in the context of the FLOSS community, since that is the one I know best. I hope it maps to other fields as well.
Firstly: I quite like Michel’s theories, because they seem to describe this “Phenomenon” that we witness spreading around the world these days rather well. I have worked with different FLOSS groups and recognise them in many details of the paper.
As for the feminism part, I think we can agree that there is a massive underrepresentation of women in most (all?) P2P communities. So, apparently something keeps women from engaging in P2P activities. There are of course the obvious reasons: In IT for example there is a underrepresentation of women altogether. But still, in “normal” IT the percentage of women is around 25%, in FLOSS they form about 1.5% to 2.5% of the total community.
So in order to answer the question of why so few women join a P2P community, the first aspect we ought to consider is: What does a P2P community look like from the outside? Or, how do people get involved in P2P in the first place?”
Meike’s conclusion: “These things provided, I am confident that the amount of women in FLOSS and any other P2P community will rise steadily. It is a slow process, but in the end we’ll get there!”
You are right Michel, this is a good essay and well worth reading. Thanks to Meike Reichle for sharing her insight.
Assuming that bloging is considered a P2P activity it appears that the number of women bloging might follow a similar trend although I don’t have any numbers. This was part of my first introduction to the blogher network:
“To begin broadcasting one’s voice on a blog is free and takes little technical skill, which in theory should create a more diverse network of voices than exists in mainstream media. In practice, the most linked-to bloggers are white men, who largely link to each other.”
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