I will admit to not having thought much about this topic until reading this email thread.
If we could consider ApacheCon Vancouver to be a sample, then it would seem that "yes" there is a much higher ratio of men to women participating in our events at least. If the organization and the board want to start considering this issue, then measurements and baselines are a first step. Many companies, such as Pivotal, the one I work for, are trying to improve their diversity in the public way. Here's an example of our diversity numbers that we just released: https://blog.pivotal.io/pivotal/news/pivotal-releases-diversity-data-for-the-first-time The board could consider taking a census of participants in Apache: Board & Officers, members, committers, contributors, and then releasing these aggregate numbers on an annual basis. This itself would be quite notable in the open source software world. On Fri, May 20, 2016 at 8:18 AM, Alex Harui <aha...@adobe.com> wrote: > > > On 5/20/16, 5:26 AM, "Sharan Foga" <sharan.f...@gmail.com> wrote: > >>>Hi All > >>> > >>> I'm interested in finding out how we could encourage more women to > >>> participate on Apache projects. It's a discussion topic that came up > >>>last > >>> week while I was at Apachecon. My understanding is that we don't have > >>>any > >>> current strategies in place so I think it could be good to look at > >>> gathering some ideas about how to tackle the problem and also hear > >>>about > >>> any lessons learned from any previous or similar strategies. > > FWIW, I know they are gearing up to host a "Girls Who Code" series at the > place I work this summer. Since I am not female, I do not have an easy > way to influence whether Open Source or Apache is discussed during that > series. Last year I tried to recruit two of the young ladies who happened > to use the same public transportation I do, but was unsuccessful. Maybe a > better organized promotion from some female volunteers at Apache could > have better results. > > Thanks, > -Alex > >
