Sarah Goslee <sarah.gos...@gmail.com> writes: > 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. > > 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.
Apart from that, your input is very valuable and your answers very hands-on helpful - and this is why I am glad that you are on the list - and not because you are female. Looking at R developers / CRAN package developers / list posts gender ratios might be interesting, but I don't think it tells you anything: If there is a skewed ratio in any of these, the question is if this is the gender ratio in the user base and, more importantly, in the pool of potential users. I have no idea about the gender ratios in potential users, but I would guess that some disciplines already have a skewed gender ratio, which is then reflected in R. The gender ratio in R should reflect the gender ratio of the potential users, as this is the pool the R users / developers are coming from. As long as nobody is excluded because of their gender, background, hair or eye color, OS usage, or whatever ridiculous excuse one could find, I think R will thrive. Don't get me wring - nothing against promoting R to new user groups. But anyway - interesting question. I was teaching True Basic for several years, and I definitely did not see a gender bias in their programming abilities - the differences was in many cases that males thought they could do it, and females thought they could not do it because it involves maths... But I was able to prove quite a few wrong. Cheers, Rainer > > (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 >> -- Rainer M. Krug email: Rainer<at>krugs<dot>de PGP: 0x0F52F982
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