Bibliography

Before us, numerous of scholars have worked on the problem of gender diversity in OSS, and broadly, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields. Along with our analysis, we compiled a list of prior works that reported gender representation across the years. We grouped prior studies by their data collection methods, such as survey or data mining, and their samples, such as the entire OSS population or sub-population of specific ecosystems or projects.

Overview of gender diversity in OSS
‘Patches don’t have gender’: What is not open in open source software
Nafus, D. (2012). ‘Patches don’t have gender’: What is not open in open source software. New Media & Society, 14(4), 669-683.
Including Everyone, Everywhere: Understanding Opportunities and Challenges of Geographic Gender-Inclusion in OSS
Prana, G. A. A., Ford, D., Rastogi, A., Lo, D., Purandare, R., & Nagappan, N. (2021). Including everyone, everywhere: Understanding opportunities and challenges of geographic gender-inclusion in oss. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.
Diversity and inclusion in open source software (oss) projects: Where do we stand?
Bosu, A., & Sultana, K. Z. (2019, September). Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand?. In 2019 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) (pp. 1-11). IEEE.
FLOSS Participants' Perceptions About Gender and Inclusiveness: A Survey
Lee, A., & Carver, J. C. (2019, May). FLOSS participants' perceptions about gender and inclusiveness: a survey. In 2019 IEEE/ACM 41st International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) (pp. 677-687). IEEE.
Hidden Figures: Roles and Pathways of Successful OSS Contributors
Trinkenreich, B., Guizani, M., Wiese, I., Sarma, A., & Steinmacher, I. (2020). Hidden figures: Roles and pathways of successful oss contributors. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 4(CSCW2), 1-22.
Benefits of Diversity
Gender and tenure diversity in github teams
B. Vasilescu, D. Posnett, B. Ray, M. G. van den Brand, A. Serebrenik, P. Devanbu, and V. Filkov, “Gender and tenure diversity in github teams,” in Proceedings of the 33rd annual ACM conference on human factors in computing systems, 2015, pp. 3789–3798.
The effects of diversity in global, distributed collectives: A study of open source project success
Daniel, S., Agarwal, R., & Stewart, K. J. (2013). The effects of diversity in global, distributed collectives: A study of open source project success. Information Systems Research, 24(2), 312-333.
Gendered patterns of politeness in free/libre open source software development
Moon, E. (2013, January). Gendered patterns of politeness in free/libre open source software development. In 2013 46th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 3168-3177). IEEE.
Fairness
Title Ecosystems Reference
Gender differences and bias in open source: pull request acceptance of women versus men Objective-C, Matlab, Ruby, Python, C++, PHP Terrell, J., Kofink, A., Middleton, J., Rainear, C., Murphy-Hill, E., Parnin, C., & Stallings, J. (2017). Gender differences and bias in open source: Pull request acceptance of women versus men. PeerJ Computer Science, 3, e111.
Gendered behavior as a disadvantage in open source software development JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Ruby, PHP, Python, Jupyter Notebook, R, C++, CSS Vedres, B., & Vasarhelyi, O. (2019). Gendered behavior as a disadvantage in open source software development. EPJ Data Science, 8(1), 25.
Past Census
Survey
Title Year Data Source Sample Size Women Percentage Reference
Who Is Doing It 2001 Online Survey 5,478 0% Robles, G., Scheider, H., Tretkowski, I., & Weber, N. (2001). Who is doing it. A research on Libre Software developers.
Free/libre and open source software: Survey and study 2002 Online Survey 2,748 1.10% Ghosh, R. A., Glott, R., Krieger, B., & Robles, G. (2002). Free/libre and open source software: Survey and study.
Why hackers do what they do: Understanding motivation and effort in free/open source software projects 2001-2002 Email 684 2.50% Lakhani, K. R., & Wolf, R. G. (2003). Why hackers do what they do: Understanding motivation and effort in free/open source software projects. Open Source Software Projects (September 2003).
Working for free? Motivations for participating in open-source projects 2002 Email 79 5.00% Alexander Hars, S. O. (2002). Working for free? Motivations for participating in open-source projects. International journal of electronic commerce, 6(3), 25-39.
FLOSS-US the free/libre/open source software survey for 2003 2003 Online Survey 1,588 1.60% David, P. A., Waterman, A., & Arora, S. (2003). FLOSS-US the free/libre/open source software survey for 2003. Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Stanford University, Stanford, CA (http://www. stanford. edu/group/floss-us/report/FLOSS-US-Report. pdf).
Motivations in open source software communities: The mediating role of effort intensity and goal commitment 2010 Online Survey 230 4.00% Ke, W., & Zhang, P. (2009). Motivations in open source software communities: The mediating role of effort intensity and goal commitment. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 13(4), 39-66.
Women in free/libre/open source software: The situation in the 2010s 2013 Online Survey 2,183 10.35% Robles, G., Reina, L. A., González-Barahona, J. M., & Domínguez, S. D. (2016, May). Women in free/libre/open source software: The situation in the 2010s. In IFIP International Conference on Open Source Systems (pp. 163-173). Springer, Cham.
Gender and tenure diversity in github teams 2015 Online Survey 816 24.00% Vasilescu, B., Posnett, D., Ray, B., van den Brand, M. G., Serebrenik, A., Devanbu, P., & Filkov, V. (2015, April). Gender and tenure diversity in GitHub teams. In Proceedings of the 33rd annual ACM conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 3789-3798).
GitHub Open Source Survey 2017 Online Survey 6,000 5.00% GitHub Survey
StackOverflow Developer Survey Results 2017 Online Survey 64,000 7.60% StackOverflow Survey
FLOSS participants' perceptions about gender and inclusiveness: a survey 2019 Online Survey 119 10.90% Lee, A., & Carver, J. C. (2019, May). FLOSS participants' perceptions about gender and inclusiveness: a survey. In Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) (pp. 677-687). IEEE.
The shifting sands of motivation: Revisiting what drives contributors in open source 2021 Online Survey 242 7.60% Gerosa, M., Wiese, I., Trinkenreich, B., Link, G., Robles, G., Treude, C., ... & Sarma, A. (2021, May). The shifting sands of motivation: Revisiting what drives contributors in open source. In Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) (pp. 1046-1058). IEEE.
Data mining
Title Year Data Source Gender Inferece Sample Size Women Percentage Reference
Gender differences in early free and open source software joining process 2012 email subscribers US Census 1,931 8.27% Kuechler, V., Gilbertson, C., & Jensen, C. (2012, September). Gender differences in early free and open source software joining process. In IFIP International Conference on Open Source Systems (pp. 78-93). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Gender, representation and online participation: A quantitative study of stackoverflow 2012 StackOverflow genderComputer 2,588 11.24% Vasilescu, B., Capiluppi, A., & Serebrenik, A. (2012, December). Gender, representation and online participation: A quantitative study of stackoverflow. In 2012 International Conference on Social Informatics (pp. 332-338). IEEE.
Contributions of the under-appreciated: Gender bias in an open-source ecology 2015 GitHub genderComputer 1,049,345 8.71% Kofink, A. (2015, October). Contributions of the under-appreciated: Gender bias in an open-source ecology. In Companion Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Systems, Programming, Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity (pp. 83-84).
A data set for social diversity studies of GitHub teams 2015 GitHub genderComputer 837,392 9.00% Vasilescu, B., Serebrenik, A., & Filkov, V. (2015, May). A data set for social diversity studies of GitHub teams. In 2015 IEEE/ACM 12th working conference on mining software repositories (pp. 514-517). IEEE.
Gender differences and bias in open source: Pull request acceptance of women versus men 2017 GitHub modified genderComputer + Google+ 328,988 6.36% Terrell, J., Kofink, A., Middleton, J., Rainear, C., Murphy-Hill, E., Parnin, C., & Stallings, J. (2017). Gender differences and bias in open source: Pull request acceptance of women versus men. PeerJ Computer Science, 3, e111.
Going farther together: The impact of social capital on sustained participation in open source 2019 GitHub Namsor 300,000 9.70% Qiu, H. S., Nolte, A., Brown, A., Serebrenik, A., & Vasilescu, B. (2019, May). Going farther together: The impact of social capital on sustained participation in open source. In Proceedings of 2019 ieee/acm 41st international conference on software engineering (ICSE) (pp. 688-699). IEEE.
Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand? 2019 Gerrit modified genderComputer + Google+ + LinkedIn + Facebook + Google Search 4,543 8.80% Bosu, A., & Sultana, K. Z. (2019, September). Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand?. In 2019 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) (pp. 1-11). IEEE.
Gender diversity in the OpenStack community: A new report 2013-2017 OpenStack Summit in Barcelona and Boston genderize.io - 9.80% Izquierdo, D., Huesman, N., Serebrenik, A., & Robles, G. (2018). Openstack gender diversity report. IEEE Software, 36(1), 28-33.
Gender diversity in the OpenStack community: A new report 2017 Online Survey genderize.io - 10.40% Izquierdo, D., Huesman, N., Serebrenik, A., & Robles, G. (2018). Openstack gender diversity report. IEEE Software, 36(1), 28-33.
Work practices and perceptions from women core developers in OSS communities 2020 GitHub genderComputer + Namsor 242,662 5.35% Canedo, E. D., Bonifácio, R., Okimoto, M. V., Serebrenik, A., Pinto, G., & Monteiro, E. (2020, October). Work practices and perceptions from women core developers in oss communities. In Proceedings of the 14th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) (pp. 1-11).
Work practices and perceptions from women core developers in OSS communities 2020 GitHub genderComputer + Namsor 1,954 core 2.30% Canedo, E. D., Bonifácio, R., Okimoto, M. V., Serebrenik, A., Pinto, G., & Monteiro, E. (2020, October). Work practices and perceptions from women core developers in oss communities. In Proceedings of the 14th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) (pp. 1-11).
Gender Typicality of Behavior Predicts Success on Creative Platforms 2021 GitHub genderComputer + Simple Gender 1,634,373 5.49% Vasarhelyi, O., & Vedres, B. (2021). Gender Typicality of Behavior Predicts Success on Creative Platforms. arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.01093.
Including everyone, everywhere: Understanding opportunities and challenges of geographic gender-inclusion in oss 2021 GitHub genderize.io 65,132 10.00% Prana, G. A. A., Ford, D., Rastogi, A., Lo, D., Purandare, R., & Nagappan, N. (2021). Including everyone, everywhere: Understanding opportunities and challenges of geographic gender-inclusion in oss. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.
Worldwide Gender Differences in Public Code Contributions: and how they have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic 2022 Software Heritage GENDER GUESSER 21.4M 10.00% Rossi, D., & Zacchiroli, S. (2022). Worldwide Gender Differences in Public Code Contributions. arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.07278.
Worldwide Gender Differences in Public Code Contributions 2022 Software Heritage GENDER GUESSER 21.4M 10.00% Rossi, D., & Zacchiroli, S. (2022). Worldwide Gender Differences in Public Code Contributions. In Proceedings of 2022 International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE). IEEE.
Ecosystems or Projects
Title Ecosystem Year Data Source Gender Inferece Sample Size Women Percentage Reference
Gender, representation and online participation: A quantitative study Drupal 2014 mailing list genderComputer 3,342 9.81% Vasilescu, B., Capiluppi, A., & Serebrenik, A. (2014). Gender, representation and online participation: A quantitative study. Interacting with Computers, 26(5), 488-511.
Gender, representation and online participation: A quantitative study Wordpress 2014 mailing list genderComputer 3,611 7.81% Vasilescu, B., Capiluppi, A., & Serebrenik, A. (2014). Gender, representation and online participation: A quantitative study. Interacting with Computers, 26(5), 488-511.
ASF Committer Diversity Survey. 2016 Apache 2016 Online survey - 765 5.20% Sharan, F. (2020). ASF Committer Diversity Survey. 2016.
Gender-diversity Analysis of the Linux Kernel Technical Contributions Linux 2005-2016 GitHub genderize.io 14,905 8% Linux Report
Preliminary report on the influence of capital in an ethical-modular project: Quantitative data from the 2016 Debian survey Debian 2016 Online survey - 1,479 2% Raissi, M., de Blanc, M., & Zacchiroli, S. (2017). Preliminary report on the influence of capital in an ethical-modular project: Quantitative data from the 2016 Debian survey. Journal of Peer Production, (10), 1-25.
Where Are Females in OSS Projects? Socio Technical Interactions Angular.js 2019 GitHub Namsor 1,601 3.40% Asri, I. E., & Kerzazi, N. (2019, September). Where Are Females in OSS Projects? Socio Technical Interactions. In Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises (pp. 308-319). Springer, Cham.
Where Are Females in OSS Projects? Socio Technical Interactions Moby 2019 GitHub Namsor 1,824 3.50% Asri, I. E., & Kerzazi, N. (2019, September). Where Are Females in OSS Projects? Socio Technical Interactions. In Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises (pp. 308-319). Springer, Cham.
Where Are Females in OSS Projects? Socio Technical Interactions Rails 2019 GitHub Namsor 3,723 4.20% Asri, I. E., & Kerzazi, N. (2019, September). Where Are Females in OSS Projects? Socio Technical Interactions. In Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises (pp. 308-319). Springer, Cham.
Where Are Females in OSS Projects? Socio Technical Interactions Django 2019 GitHub Namsor 1,672 5.30% Asri, I. E., & Kerzazi, N. (2019, September). Where Are Females in OSS Projects? Socio Technical Interactions. In Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises (pp. 308-319). Springer, Cham.
Where Are Females in OSS Projects? Socio Technical Interactions Elasticsearch 2019 GitHub Namsor 1,127 4.20% Asri, I. E., & Kerzazi, N. (2019, September). Where Are Females in OSS Projects? Socio Technical Interactions. In Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises (pp. 308-319). Springer, Cham.
Where Are Females in OSS Projects? Socio Technical Interactions TensorFlow 2019 GitHub Namsor 1,735 5.80% Asri, I. E., & Kerzazi, N. (2019, September). Where Are Females in OSS Projects? Socio Technical Interactions. In Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises (pp. 308-319). Springer, Cham.
Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand? Android 2019 Gerrit genderComputer 258 core 3.87% Bosu, A., & Sultana, K. Z. (2019, September). Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand?. In 2019 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) (pp. 1-11). IEEE.
Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand? Chromium OS 2019 Gerrit genderComputer 151 core 3.97% Bosu, A., & Sultana, K. Z. (2019, September). Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand?. In 2019 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) (pp. 1-11). IEEE.
Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand? Couchbase 2019 Gerrit genderComputer 24 core 4.17% Bosu, A., & Sultana, K. Z. (2019, September). Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand?. In 2019 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) (pp. 1-11). IEEE.
Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand? Go 2019 Gerrit genderComputer 90 core 7.77% Bosu, A., & Sultana, K. Z. (2019, September). Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand?. In 2019 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) (pp. 1-11). IEEE.
Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand? LibreOffice 2019 Gerrit genderComputer 68 core 1.47% Bosu, A., & Sultana, K. Z. (2019, September). Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand?. In 2019 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) (pp. 1-11). IEEE.
Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand? OmapZoom 2019 Gerrit genderComputer 64 core 10% Bosu, A., & Sultana, K. Z. (2019, September). Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand?. In 2019 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) (pp. 1-11). IEEE.
Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand? oVirt 2019 Gerrit genderComputer 34 core 2.94% Bosu, A., & Sultana, K. Z. (2019, September). Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand?. In 2019 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) (pp. 1-11). IEEE.
Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand? Qt 2019 Gerrit genderComputer 159 core 3.12% Bosu, A., & Sultana, K. Z. (2019, September). Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand?. In 2019 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) (pp. 1-11). IEEE.
Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand? Typo3 2019 Gerrit genderComputer 73 core 4.10% Bosu, A., & Sultana, K. Z. (2019, September). Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand?. In 2019 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) (pp. 1-11). IEEE.
Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand? Whamcloud 2019 Gerrit genderComputer 19 core 0% Bosu, A., & Sultana, K. Z. (2019, September). Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand?. In 2019 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) (pp. 1-11). IEEE.
The Linux Foundation Report on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Open Source Linux 2021 Online survey - 2,350 14% Linux Report
Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand? 2019 Gerrit modified genderComputer + Google+ + LinkedIn + Facebook + Google Search 4,543 8.80% Bosu, A., & Sultana, K. Z. (2019, September). Diversity and inclusion in open source software (OSS) projects: Where do we stand?. In 2019 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) (pp. 1-11). IEEE.
Gender diversity in the OpenStack community: A new report 2013-2017 OpenStack Summit in Barcelona and Boston genderize.io - 9.80% Izquierdo, D., Huesman, N., Serebrenik, A., & Robles, G. (2018). Openstack gender diversity report. IEEE Software, 36(1), 28-33.
Gender diversity in the OpenStack community: A new report 2017 Online Survey genderize.io - 10.40% Izquierdo, D., Huesman, N., Serebrenik, A., & Robles, G. (2018). Openstack gender diversity report. IEEE Software, 36(1), 28-33.
Work practices and perceptions from women core developers in OSS communities 2020 GitHub genderComputer + Namsor 242,662 5.35% Canedo, E. D., Bonifácio, R., Okimoto, M. V., Serebrenik, A., Pinto, G., & Monteiro, E. (2020, October). Work practices and perceptions from women core developers in oss communities. In Proceedings of the 14th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) (pp. 1-11).
Work practices and perceptions from women core developers in OSS communities 2020 GitHub genderComputer + Namsor 1,954 core 2.30% Canedo, E. D., Bonifácio, R., Okimoto, M. V., Serebrenik, A., Pinto, G., & Monteiro, E. (2020, October). Work practices and perceptions from women core developers in oss communities. In Proceedings of the 14th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) (pp. 1-11).
Gender Typicality of Behavior Predicts Success on Creative Platforms 2021 GitHub genderComputer + Simple Gender 1,634,373 5.49% Vasarhelyi, O., & Vedres, B. (2021). Gender Typicality of Behavior Predicts Success on Creative Platforms. arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.01093.
Including everyone, everywhere: Understanding opportunities and challenges of geographic gender-inclusion in oss 2021 GitHub genderize.io 65,132 10.00% Prana, G. A. A., Ford, D., Rastogi, A., Lo, D., Purandare, R., & Nagappan, N. (2021). Including everyone, everywhere: Understanding opportunities and challenges of geographic gender-inclusion in oss. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.
Worldwide Gender Differences in Public Code Contributions: and how they have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic 2022 Software Heritage GENDER GUESSER 21.4M 10.00% Rossi, D., & Zacchiroli, S. (2022). Worldwide Gender Differences in Public Code Contributions. arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.07278.