Introduction

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

Data Gathering

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 only

Other R Project Contributions

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

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

Surveys

• Get input from the community on obstacles and ideas for improvements
• Target survey at particular populations, e.g.
  • useR! attendees
  • local user group attendees
  • package maintainers
  • R-help users
  • Stackoverflow users

First survey is of useR! 2016 participants

Conferences

useR!

• At useR! 2016, 30% participants are women

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

Steps Forward

• Gradual increase in number of female keynotes
• Code of conduct introduced in 2015
• Diversity scholarships & mothers’ room in 2016

Future useR!s

WiR task force have made recommendations, including

• Maintain current gender balance for invited speakers
• Aim for similar gender balance for tutors
  • 28% tutorials have woman tutor this year
• 50:50 program committee and session chairs
• ≥ 20% women on any panels
• Put gender statistics on conference website

Childcare will be offered at useR! 2017

Communications

Twitter

@RWomenTaskforce

Supporting Women via Twitter

• Promote female-led R workshops/webinars etc
• Advertise R conferences/events
• Advertise opportunities for women (grants/awards/jobs etc)
• Support women advancing in R (via likes)
• Share articles/initiatives on encouraging diversity

Have something to tweet/re-tweet?

Pacific: @JennyBryan, jenny@stat.ubc.ca
GMT: @dragonflystats, kobriendublin@gmail.com
AEST: @AliciaOshlack, alicia.oshlack@mcri.edu.au

Website

http://forwards.github.io/

Looking for developers

Ideas for Further Activities

Workshops

• Female only/males as +1s
• Majority female mentors
• Workshops in partnership with RUGs
  • looking for partners
• Developer summer school
  • Zurich 2018
  • looking for organisers outside Europe for 2017

R-Ladies

• 2 active groups
  • the original: R-Ladies San Fransisco
  • new for 2016:
    R-ladies London
    
    

Looking for new founders

On Ramps for Contributing

• Several R packages on GitHub have a CONTRIBUTING.md
  • often not designed for novices
• Target issues at novices
  • use tags
  • step-by-step instructions

Supporting the Taskforce

• Follow us @RWomenTaskforce
• Complete our survey
• Further opportunities:
  • Organisers/mentors for training
  • Web developers
  • R-ladies founders
  • Sponsors
• Potential for co-ordinating funding applications
• Ideas/offers to rowforwards@gmail.com