Discrimination, Misogyny and Harassment: Examples from OSS : Content Analysis of Women-focused Online Discussion Forums

Abstract

Open Source Software (OSS) communities are notorious for discrimination and hostility towards women and currently, only 23 percent of OSS developers are women. Despite that, less than five percent of the online communities have “safe spaces†focused on supporting women. In this article, we present the results of our in-depth study of these women-focused spaces. These spaces exist to provide a common forum for discussion, support, empowerment, and engagement of minorities in OSS. Our analysis focuses on the messages related to sexism and discrimination experiences as posted on these discussion forums by women of OSS. The results demonstrate examples of harassment, the support that these spaces provide, and the impact of the discrimination on the presence of women in OSS in general. We conclude with recommendations for OSS community organizers for creating a friendly, equitable environment for women in OSS. ACM Reference format: Vandana Singh and William Brandon. 2022. Discrimination, Misogyny, and Harassment: Examples from OSS: Content Analysis of Women-focused Online Discussion Forums. In Proceedings of ACM Conference [GE@ICSE'22] Third Workshop on Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Software Engineering, May 20, 2022, Pittsburg, PA, USA.