At the risk of opening up a can of worms, but also at the gain of increased understanding, I'd like to bring to our attention two things regarding minorities in the Code4Lib community.
The first is an article in First Monday -- http://bit.ly/10gPeI7 -- "'Free as in sexist?' Free culture and the gender gap". From the abstract:
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. I suggest 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.
The article was brought to my attention by Rosalyn Metz. "Thank you."
The second is a cool gender visualization brought to my attention by a colleague here in the Libraries -- Lauren Ajamie. (Again, "Thank you.") It illustrates the percentage of women to men in the publishing of scholarly content. There has got to be an API under there somewhere, but I haven't found it.
--
Eric Morgan
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