Free as in Sexist? The Gender Gap in Free Culture - A Lecture by Joseph Reagle
Channel: communicationplusone
Date: 2013-02-23

Free as in Sexist? Free Culture and the Gender Gap
by Professor Joseph Regle, Communication Department, Northeastern University
Friday, February 22
4:00 to 5:45
Room E35, Machmer Hall
University of Massachusetts

The Center for the Study of Communication hosted Joseph Reagle to discuss the gender gap in the free culture movement. Despite the values of freedom and openness, the free culture movement's gender balance is as skewed (or more so) as that of the computing culture from which it arose. Based on the collection and analysis of discourse on gender and sexism within this movement over a six year period.

Reagle suggests three possible causes: (a) some geek identities can be narrow and unappealing; (b) open communities are especially susceptible to difficult people; and, (c) the ideas of freedom and openness can be used to dismiss concerns and rationalize the gender gap as a matter of preference and choice.

Joseph Reagle is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern, a faculty associate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, and author of Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia (The MIT Press, 2010).

Recorded and Produced by Zachary McDowell for communication +1