UNESCO, FOSS Groups and Initiatives by and for Women and Girls

UNESCO’s Gender Equality in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community is looking for groups and initiatives that promote women’s role and representation in FOSS. This will allow building a comprehensive repository of FOSS Groups and Initiatives by and for Women and Girls. UNESCO is looking for initiatives promoting women’s role in Free and Open Source Software

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is liberally licensed software that grants users the right to use, study, adapt and distribute its design through the availability of its source code. Such approach to the use and development of software encourages innovation and skills-building.

FOSS has dramatically changed the way software is produced, distributed, supported and used. However, most of the problems pertaining to gender inequalities in the software industry have been duplicated in the FOSS field. According to UNESCO’s Report on Gender Equality and Free and Open Source Software, globally less than 20 per cent of ICT developers and FOSS users are women.

Women constitute half of the world population and they are an important part of the media consumers. Yet, women still do not constitute half of the media images and voices, nor media messages address half of women’s interests and concerns.

Gender equality in the media implies that women’s as well as men’s interests, concerns and experiences are included in news coverage and that the producers of that coverage are both women professionals and men professionals. UNESCO holds that the under-representation of women in the upper echelons of media management is both a symptom and cause of the inequality between the sexes and discrimination against women.

Moreover, the exclusion of women from the news – as shapers and subjects of that news – is not only a gender issue. Freedom of expression, a highly important UNESCO objective, is best served by equal representation of working professionals in media. Media that discriminates against its professionals on the basis of gender, ethnic origin, disability or otherwise, severely compromises the independence and pluralism of information conveyed to local, national and international communities.

Women Make the News initiative is designed to bring attention to the fact that although women journalists are increasingly present in numbers in both electronic and print media, not enough women rise above the “glass ceiling” to key editorial and leadership positions.

Women Makes the News seeks to encourage media managers to give fair consideration to female newsroom staff in terms of assignments, positions and career development opportunities. Editors-in-chief choose the news to be covered, determine the points of view, allot the time to items and express the media’s values through “editorial choices”.

The key to having professional and profitable journalism is to stay on top of the needs and desires of all readers and viewers, to have a wide range of viewpoints and voices covered, including those of women.

Furthermore, women’s entry level wages are only 17 per cent of men’s wages. Figures are especially worrying in FOSS. Only 2 per cent of professionals working in FOSS are women, compared to 28 per cent in proprietary software.

For this reason, UNESCO calls on FOSS communities to build a comprehensive list of FOSS Groups and Initiatives for Women and Girls. UNESCO encourages women’s and girls’ active participation in all aspects of the development and use of FOSS at all levels: cultural, economic, political and technical.

The objectives of the repository are the following:

• to raise awareness about the gender gaps in FOSS;
• to give more visibility to women-led FOSS groups and activities, including their important role as models and mentors for women and girls interested in FOSS;
• to highlight women’s representation and achievements in FOSS, and dedicated activities;
• to provide a platform where different FOSS groups can create collaborative efforts, exchange information through relevant NGOs, associations, business, academia and the public sectors, and promote initiatives contributing to women’s participation and advancement in FOSS.

Gender Equality is one of UNESCO’s global priorities, together with Africa, for the period 2008-2013. Within this framework, UNESCO seeks to promote women empowerment and to mainstream gender in all UNESCO policies, strategies and programmes (education, sciences, culture and communication).

The Gender Equality in Free Open Source Software community on WSIS-KC platform aims at creating a network of different institutions and projects that deal with the issue of the under-representation of Women in Technology -and more deeply with the Gender Gap in FOSS.

The community is trying to identify and measure which are the sociological and scientific reasons of this gap and find some possible solutions to these inequalities by looking at what challenges, either within or outside the FOSS community, prevent women from engaging with Free and Open Source Software or impede a full acknowledgement of their valuable contribution.

Gender Equality in Free Open Source Software community(WISIS-KC)

Please send your contributions by e-mail to: [email protected]  or join the UNESCO FOSS community by providing the following information:

• for groups: name of the group, national or regional scope, a brief introduction and the link;
• for initiatives/activities: title and a brief introduction including goals, status and achievements.