Addressing the Gender Gap in the R Project

Heather Turner

and the Women in R Taskforce:

Jenny Bryan, Di Cook, Julie Josse,
Oliver Keyes, Michael Lawrence, Kevin O’Brien,
Alicia Oshlack, Carolin Strobl


October 13, 2016

What gender gap?

Conferences

  • At useR! 2016, 28% participants were women

  • The percentage of female presenters was higher for lightning (25%) and poster (28%) vs talks (19%)

  • In 2015 all above percentages were ~19%

Packages

  • 2010 survey of 1087 maintainers of packages on CRAN/Bioconductor plus contributors on R-forge¹
  • 9% of package authors were women (95% CI: 7.1 - 11.0%)
  • 32.5% were from the USA

¹Mair, P., Hofmann, E., Gruber, K., Hatzinger, R., Zeleis, A. and Hornik, K. (2015) Motivation, values, and work design as drivers of participation in the R open source project for statistical computing, PNAS

Packages

  • All CRAN maintainers (Mar 2016) processed with genderizer
    • uses databases to predict gender from first name
  • Supplemented by manual assignment
  • 14.8% package authors “female”, 11.4% with P(gender) ≥ 0.8

Other R Project Contributions

  • 18% Google Summer of Code 2015 mentors were women (9 individuals)
  • In remaining cases, percentages represent one or two women

What are we aiming for?

US Students

  • Source: US National Center for Education Statistics (2013-14)
  • Computer science ranges from 18% (Bachelor’s) to 29% (Master’s) female
  • Others range from 29% to 58% female

US Occupations

  • Data from American Community Survey 2014
  • 22% female programmers
  • Other scientific/analytic occupations at least 41% female

Goals for R Community

  • Developers (CRAN maintainers, GSoC students, ISC funding holders) should at least be comparable to computer science figures
    • > 20% women
  • Broader user community (R conference attendees/speakers, RUG members) should at least be comparable to mathematical/natural sciences
    • 30-40% women

How can we get there?

Women in R Task Force

to improve the participation and experience of women in the R community

Jenny Bryan
CA 		Alicia Oshlack
AU 		Oliver Keyes
US
Di Cook
AU 		Carolin Strobl
CH 		Kevin O’Brien
IE
Julie Josse
FR 		Heather Turner
UK 		Michael Lawrence
US

Twitter

Website/GitHub

Data Monitoring


Details Done To Do
useR! attendees, invited speakers, presenters, chairs, committee members 2015-2016 2004-2014
packages CRAN maintainers/authors, others? maintainers authors
GSoC students, mentors 2015 2008-
ISC projects proposers round 1 round 2
R Journal editors, authors editors authors

Surveys

  • Conducted survey of useR! 2016 participants
  • Potentially target other populations, e.g.
    • local user group attendees
    • package maintainers
    • R-help users
    • StackOverflow users
  • ISC survey may serve purpose for R community at large


useR! Survey: Some Results

  • Female population is general younger

useR! Survey: Some Results

  • Males more likely to use R for fun

useR! Survey: Some Results

  • Males more likely to have caregiving responsibilities

Past Work on useR!

  • useR! has already been working to improve diversity
    • gradual increase in number of female keynotes
    • code of conduct introduced in 2015
    • diversity scholarships & mothers’ room in 2016

2016 and Beyond

  • The taskforce made recommendations for useR! 2016

    Recomendation Action
    50:50 program committee 7:6 female:male
    50:50 session chairs 7:18
    ≥ 20% women on panels NA
    put gender stats on website not done
  • Future useR!s
    • maintain current gender balance for invited speakers
    • aim for similar gender balance for tutors: 28% had female tutor in 2015
  • useR! 2017 proposal includes offering childcare

R-ladies

  • Meet-ups to support women in R

  • Example events
    • drop-in session for beginners
    • tutorials
    • “Tour de R”
    • SF uncubed: recruiting tech event

credit: Hannah Frick

Current/Potential Groups

  • San Francisco, USA
  • Los Angeles, USA
  • New York, USA
  • Boston, USA
  • Research Triangle Park, USA
  • Nashville, USA
  • Columbus, USA
  • Twin Cities, USA
  • London, England
  • Paris, France
  • Barcelona, Spain
  • Madrid, Spain
  • Berlin, Germany
  • Istanbul, Turkey
  • Lima, Peru
  • Taipei, Taiwan
  • Melbourne, Australia
  • (Washington DC, USA)
  • (Manchester, UK)
  • (Tbilisi, Georgia)

Supporting R Ladies

  • Follow on Twitter: @RLadiesGlobal
    • Also group-specific: @RLadiesSF, @RLadiesLondon, …
  • Join/start a group
  • Support a group
    • Host a meeting
    • Sponsor beer & pizza (or equivalent!)

R Ladies Directory

  • Find speakers, tutors, mentors, committee members, consultants…
  • Add yourself with the online form!

Future Work of Task Force

  • Focus more on intersectional issues, e.g. race

  • Organise Women in R workshops on package development
    • NZ in Dec 2017?
    • Zurich in summer 2018?

  • Work on “on-ramps” for women developers, e.g. encouraging GitHub contributions

Get Involved

  • Women:
    • Join R-ladies as novice/mentor
    • Add yourself to R-ladies directory
  • Everyone:
    • Be aware of (other) women’s contributions
    • Invite women to participate
    • Promote welcoming culture

Summary

  • There is a gender gap in both user and developer communities
  • Women in R Taskforce has been established to address this.
    • So far: data gathering, useR!, supporting current work
    • Future: diversity more generally, developing developers
  • R-ladies is expanding to address outreach and mentoring

http://forwards.github.io/

http://rladies.org/