On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 1:15 PM, Martin Morgan <mtmor...@fredhutch.org> wrote: > On 11/25/2014 04:11 AM, Scott Kostyshak wrote: >> >> On Mon, Nov 24, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Sarah Goslee <sarah.gos...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >>> >>> I took a look at apparent gender among list participants a few years ago: >>> https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2011-June/280272.html >>> >>> Same general thing: very few regular participants on the list were >>> women. I don't see any sign that that has changed in the last three >>> years. The bar to participation in the R-help list is much, much lower >>> than that to become a developer. >> >> >> I plotted the gender of posters on r-help over time. The plot is here: >> https://twitter.com/scottkosty/status/449933971644633088 >> >> The code to reproduce that plot is here: >> https://github.com/scottkosty/genderAnalysis >> The R file there will call devtools::install_github to install a >> package from Github used for guessing the gender based on the first >> name (https://github.com/scottkosty/gender). > > > It would be great to include in your package the script that scraped author > names from R-help archives (I guess that's what you did?). Presumably it > easily applies to other mailing lists hosted at the same location (R-devel, > further along the ladder from user to developer, and Bioconductor / > Bioc-devel, in a different domain and perhaps confounded with a different > 'feel' to the list). Also the R community is definitely international, so > finding more versatile gender-assignment approaches seems important.
I just put the script up on https://github.com/scottkosty/genderAnalysis I don't have much time at the moment to generalize it, but a pull request is always welcome. Alternatively, anyone is welcome (at least as far as I'm concerned) to take the script and modify it for any purpose. > it might be interesting to ask about participation in mailing list forums > versus other, and in particular the recent Bioconductor transition from > mailing list to 'StackOverflow' style support forum > (https://support.bioconductor.org) -- on the one hand the 'gamification' > elements might seem to only entrench male participation, while on the other > we have already seen increased (quantifiable) and broader (subjective) > participation from the Bioconductor community. I'd be happy to make support > site usage data available, and am interested in collaborating in an > academically well-founded analysis of this data; any interested parties > please feel free to contact me off-list. I would be interested in collaborating on such a project in the future also. Scott -- Scott Kostyshak Economics PhD Candidate Princeton University > > Martin Morgan > Bioconductor > > >> >> Note also on that tweet that Gabriela de Queiroz posted it, who is the >> founder of R-ladies; and that David Smith showed interest in >> discussing the topic. So there is definitely demand for some data >> analysis and discussion on the topic. >> >>> It would be interesting to look at the stats for CRAN packages as well. >>> >>> The very low percentage of regular female participants is one of the >>> things that keeps me active on this list: to demonstrate that it's not >>> only men who use R and participate in the community. >> >> >> Thank you for that! >> >> Scott >> >> >> -- >> Scott Kostyshak >> Economics PhD Candidate >> Princeton University >> >>> (If you decide to do the stats for 2014, be aware that I've been out >>> on medical leave for the past two months, so the numbers are even >>> lower than usual.) >>> >>> Sarah >>> >>> On Mon, Nov 24, 2014 at 10:10 AM, Maarten Blaauw >>> <maarten.bla...@qub.ac.uk> wrote: >>>> >>>> Hi there, >>>> >>>> I can't help to notice that the gender balance among R developers and >>>> ordinary members is extremely skewed (as it is with open source software >>>> in >>>> general). >>>> >>>> Have a look at http://www.r-project.org/foundation/memberlist.html - at >>>> most >>>> a handful of women are listed among the 'supporting members', and none >>>> at >>>> all among the 29 'ordinary members'. >>>> >>>> On the other hand I personally know many happy R users of both genders. >>>> >>>> My questions are thus: Should R developers (and users) be worried that >>>> the >>>> 'other half' is excluded? If so, how could female R users/developers be >>>> persuaded to become more visible (e.g. added as supporting or ordinary >>>> members)? >>>> >>>> Thanks, >>>> >>>> Maarten >>>> >>> -- >>> Sarah Goslee >>> http://www.functionaldiversity.org >>> >>> ______________________________________________ >>> R-help@r-project.org mailing list >>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help >>> PLEASE do read the posting guide >>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html >>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. >> >> >> ______________________________________________ >> R-help@r-project.org mailing list >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help >> PLEASE do read the posting guide >> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html >> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. >> > > > -- > Computational Biology / Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center > 1100 Fairview Ave. N. > PO Box 19024 Seattle, WA 98109 > > Location: Arnold Building M1 B861 > Phone: (206) 667-2793 ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
