Comments from the rusty cage

Fri, 03 Feb 2006

Some work on gender and FLOSS

I've been pretty busy lately, reading and writing up some stuff on women in/and FLOSS. The source of this "activity fit" was Michel Bauwens, who sent me an e-mail at the end of November. He asked me to look into the research he did on peer production, peer governance, and peer property modes (short essay on the topic) and comment on it with regard to the underrepresentation of women in P2P communities. I felt quite flattered by his request, so I put some effort in it, in order to give an (as I hope) well-founded answer. The result is this mini-essay, that is now featured in the P2P Foundation blog and may also pop up in a few other places.
This also coincides nicely with a mail I got at about the same time from the FLOSSPOLS Project. They are organising a workshop on gender and FLOSS in Cambridge next weekend and invited me to participate. I am very much looking forward to this! Not only because it's an interesting topic, but also because I am finally going to personally meet some very interesting women, who I've only virtually "talked" to or only read about until now.

Also, this happens at just the right time, since I have recently begun to grow a bit bored by the whole Women and FLOSS Issue and it's ever-repreating discussions. I feel that these events give me back some of the momentum I've lost over the last months. Raising the number of women in FLOSS is a complex, longsome and sometimes even tedious business and it's good to get a little push from time to time.

PS: Congrats, honey! ;-)

Posted at: 14:08 in /english/women
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