Paper | Gender Diversity Improves Open Source

Tags: gender, diversity, gender diversity, dei, open source, women, research papers



October 29, 2026

A recent study from late September this year seems to indicate that open source projects with higher gender diversity have lower risks of dropout from their members. From the abstract:

Most notably, we find that developers, especially women, who collaborate with other women experience significantly lower dropout risk, with hazard rates up to 20.7% lower.


Full paper by Tielin Katy Yu et. al. (open access): Connected to Stay: Gender Homophily and Its Role in Open-Source Software Developer Retention