Code for Pakistan and Habib University hosted an Open Source Day for Women (OSDW) on Saturday, where about 40 young women and guests participated in the day-long workshop, learning more about open source coding and about contributing to the larger civic innovation space.
OSDW offered women the opportunity to come together and hone their tech skills, while also learning about and contributing to open source tech, explained Huda Baig, Code for Pakistan’s Karachi rep who, along with Syed ObaidUllah, co-organized the event.
A lot of women who have studied [computer science] may not end up working – open source contribution is a great way for women to become active members of the open source and larger tech community, shared ObaidUllah, Founding Partner, MarketLytics, a software and data analytics studio, who volunteered with Code for Pakistan (CfP) to launch OSDW.
Obaidullah estimates Pakistan has about 2,000 active contributors to the Open Source community, entirely too tiny a percentage of the potential the country’s larger tech community has.
What is open source though?
In this context, it refers to software with its source code publicly available for people to modify and share – Baig shared- There are no proprietary, intellectual property related limitations. However, it is not about just making code publicly available, but also about collaborative participation and transparency.
It was very practical – and the workshop taught some valuable skills to help me with open source project contribution, said participant Areej Al Medinah, first year Electrical Engineering student.
Only 11% of open source contributions are by women, which may be more of a reflection of the under-representation of women in the industry, ObaidUllah said.
Women make up 48% of Pakistan’s population, however the workforce in Pakistan is less than 25% women. While in many educational fields women form the majority, the corresponding percentage of women working in that industry is significantly lower.
In Pakistani medical universities for instance, women form about 80% of the student bodies – yet only about 20% of the country’s practicing doctors seem to be women, said Sadaffe Abid, Co-Founder, CIRCLE, a Dubai-based women’s leadership development social enterprise, while wrapping up OSDW.
Women underestimate themselves, – said Abid
“Technology offers tremendous potential for growth. In Pakistan, there are only 14% women in tech. When women join the economy, not only do they grow, but their families also prosper.”
“Women work so hard to acquire an education,” shared Seattle-based Huma Hamid, a Software Engineer and Code for Pakistan volunteer whose idea it was to launch an Open Source Day for Women in the country.
Women are talented and competent but hold themselves back at an early stage in their lives which results in this huge gender gap in the workforce.
For any country’s prosperity, women play a very important role. Platforms like this are critical because they inspire young women to bring their ideas, expand their networks, encourage them, and connect with role models, Abid emphasized.
CFP is a non-profit focused on building a civic innovation ecosystem to increase citizen engagement and improve public service delivery, by supporting the development of open source mobile and web applications and conducting civic hackathons.
