Why are females with CS degrees less likely to have Github pages than males with CS degrees? Is it because of the testosterone which tends to make males show off more than females? If not that, then what?
Marginalized people in tech - women, people of color, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, and others - have less free time for a few major reasons: dependent care, domestic work and errands, and pay inequity.
Women are far more likely to be a primary caregiver of not only children, but other ailing and aging relatives. 59-75% of caregivers are women.1
52% of women caregivers with incomes at or below of the national median of $35k spend 20+ hours each week providing care. The largest racial demographics in this group are black and hispanic2.
Women perform more unpaid labor (most visible in domestics and child care) than men. On childcare alone, mothers spend more than twice as much time per day as fathers do. On average, working fathers spend only 10min more per day on child care when they are not working, whereas working mothers spend nearly twice as much when not working3.
Due to additional pay inequity contributing to less access to paid childcare, women of color perform far more child care than white women.
Those with medical conditions requiring that they regularly visit medical facilities or perform other health-related activities such as getting additional sleep, regularly exercising, doing physical therapy, being away from backlit screens, not sitting in a chair for an extended period of time, resting their hands, etc are all affected by what becomes an extended workday.
Those with a longer commute have less free time. Those who make less money can't afford the same housing costs as those that make more and are able to live in a city, so they are negatively impacted here again.
Women earn 76-89% of men's wages. 6
Women of color earn as little as 55% of white men's wages. 7
I know many women that either don't contribute to OSS because they've been dismissed for being women - being too pretty, not pretty enough, being forced to prove their competence more than their male counterparts because they're women. I've talked to women who use gender-ambiguous github names and don't post a picture of themselves as their avatar because of how quickly this happens. In addition, the sexual harassment, slurs, and other derogatory language that are used directly or indirectly at these groups of people causes many to not want to participate at all.
The cited stats are from the general population, not specifically women with CS degrees. I'm curious to see if the same stats hold up in this smaller population.
