Open Source and Gender Inclusivity: How To Build Better Communities
Channel: British Computer Society Open Source Specialists
Date: 2020-09-19

Presented by Becky Faith

Dr. Becky Faith is a Research Fellow and Leader of the Digital and Technology cluster at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. Becky’s professional experience and research interests encompass gender and technology, mobile communication studies, human computer interaction and technology for social change.

Becky has fifteen years’ strategic and programme experience working in ICT for development and technology for human rights organisations. She started her career in digital start-ups, working on the UK’s first e-commerce platforms in the 1990s.

Becky will be talking about her research on  ‘Towards A More Gender-Inclusive Open Source Community’; which set out to better understand  why  women are underrepresented and do not always feel welcome or supported in open source communities. She will be talking about what the open source community can do to encourage participation by women around the world; what strategies work best to achieve greater participation? Conformist, reformist or transformist? Do we help women cope with the inequalities they face or do we try and address the transform the unequal power structures that underpin these issues?