Why Should Women in Technology Consider Starting an Open Source Project?

Leading open-source projects empowers women in tech, enhancing leadership, skills, visibility, and diversity. It boosts career opportunities, fosters mentorship, aids in personal branding, supports collaboration, drives innovation, and contributes to social impact. This paves the way for a more inclusive tech landscape.

Leading open-source projects empowers women in tech, enhancing leadership, skills, visibility, and diversity. It boosts career opportunities, fosters mentorship, aids in personal branding, supports collaboration, drives innovation, and contributes to social impact. This paves the way for a more inclusive tech landscape.

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Ozohu Adejumo
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Empowerment Through Leadership

Developing an open source project enables women in technology to take charge, spotlighting their leadership and project management skills. By leading such projects, they not only contribute to the tech world but also establish themselves as leaders and innovators, inspiring other women to follow suit.

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Skill Development and Mastery

Initiating an open-source project offers a unique platform for personal and professional growth. It allows women to dive deep into coding, problem-solving, and collaboration, sharpening their technical skills while navigating real-world challenges, which is invaluable for career advancement.

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Ozohu Adejumo
Digital Product Manager

One of the strongest reasons women in technology should consider open source is that it creates an opportunity to demonstrate technical leadership through visible, practical work. Contributing to projects such as Open edX has shown me that open source is not only about writing code; it requires understanding complex systems, solving real problems, working within established engineering standards, responding to feedback, and building solutions that others can maintain. For women who want to grow beyond participation into technical influence, starting or contributing to an open-source project can create a public record of how they think, build and collaborate. That visibility matters. It allows technical ability to be demonstrated through evidence rather than job title alone, while also giving women the opportunity to shape the tools, standards and communities that influence the future of technology.

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Enhanced Visibility and Networking

Starting an open-source project can significantly boost visibility within the tech community. It opens doors to networking opportunities with other developers, potential employers, and mentors. This visibility is crucial for women, who are traditionally underrepresented in tech, to build a strong professional network.

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Contribution to Diversity

By starting an open-source project, women add to the diversity of voices and perspectives in the technology field. Diverse teams lead to more innovative solutions and a more inclusive tech environment. Their participation and leadership can encourage a more gender-balanced open-source community.

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Career Opportunities

Taking the lead on an open-source project can act as a portfolio showcasing technical skills, creativity, and leadership, making women more attractive to potential employers. Open-source contributions are highly valued in the tech industry and can open up new career paths, including roles at top tech companies.

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Nikki Adjei
DevOps Engineer

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES: WHY OPEN SOURCE MATTERS

When I started learning DevOps, which feels like quite a while ago, although it really wasn’t that long ago, I was introduced to open source.

I remember my tutor emphasising how important it was to understand and use open-source tools.

At the time, it didn’t quite sink in.

I had so many other tools to learn and was trying to understand how everything fitted together.

I remember creating my infrastructure using IaC and pushing the files to an open-source repository. We would then get together as a group to study and talk through what we were doing.
Branches.
Forking.
Pull requests.

At the beginning, a lot of it didn’t make much sense.

But as I continued learning and gaining more experience, those things started to make sense.

Looking back, open-source collaboration is one area I wish I had focused on more.

Not just learning how to use open-source tools, but actually contributing to projects and working alongside other people.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER FOR YOUR CAREER?
One of the biggest benefits of contributing to open source is that you’re not just learning a technical skill.

You’re learning how to work with other people.
You’re learning how to navigate code you didn’t create.
You’re learning how to read someone else’s Terraform configuration, understand an existing AWS environment, investigate an issue and make changes without breaking what is already there.

That is much closer to the reality of working in DevOps.

Building your own infrastructure from scratch is valuable.
But working in an environment that someone else has created teaches you something different.
You have to understand what is already there before deciding what needs to change.
You may review someone’s work, suggest an improvement, raise an issue, create a pull request or make changes based on feedback.
You might even come across a problem you don’t immediately know how to solve.

And that is where the real learning happens.

For women looking to move into DevOps or grow their technology careers, this experience can also become part of your portfolio.

You can show potential employers more than a list of tools on your CV.
You can demonstrate that you know how to collaborate.
That you can communicate your thinking.
That you can work with people you have never met.
That you can contribute to something you didn’t build yourself.

Start by contributing to other people’s projects. As your confidence grows, you can also create your own. Starting an open-source project gives you another opportunity to demonstrate your technical skills, but also your leadership. You’re creating something, inviting others to contribute, responding to ideas and helping move the project forward. That experience can become a powerful part of your portfolio.

And most importantly, you have real examples to talk about in an interview.
Instead of saying:

“I know Terraform.”

You can talk about the project you contributed to, the problem you encountered, how you approached it, what you changed and what you learned.

That gives you something real to talk about.
It shows potential employers what you can actually do, rather than simply telling them what you know.

If you’re trying to grow in DevOps or in a tech career, don’t only build things from scratch.

Get active and step into environments you didn’t create, as well as the ones you did.

Because real DevOps and tech roles are not about knowing everything.

They're about being able to look at something unfamiliar, work out how it fits together and figure out what to do next.

That’s a skill worth developing.

And open source is one of the places where you can start building it.

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Mentorship Opportunities

Leading an open-source project enables women to mentor and support other contributors, especially those who are new to the field or looking to transition into technology roles. This mentorship can be incredibly rewarding and is a powerful way to give back to the community while fostering the next generation of female tech professionals.

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Personal Brand Building

Starting an open-source project helps in building a personal brand as a tech professional. It allows women to showcase their expertise, work ethics, and interests. This personal branding is crucial in establishing a strong online presence and being recognized in the tech community.

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Community Support and Collaboration

Open source projects thrive on community collaboration. Starting such a project provides a platform for women to collaborate with other enthusiasts and professionals from around the world. This shared effort not only enriches the project but also creates a sense of belonging and support within the tech community.

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Innovation and Creativity

Women in technology can use open-source projects as a canvas for innovation, experimenting with new ideas, technologies, and methodologies without the constraints commonly found in corporate environments. This freedom fosters creativity and could lead to breakthrough technologies.

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Achieving Social Impact

Many open-source projects are developed with the goal of solving social issues or contributing to the greater good. Starting an open-source project gives women the opportunity to align their tech skills with their passions and values, making a tangible difference in the world through technology. By embarking on open-source projects, women in technology can amplify their impact, accelerate their careers, and contribute to a more inclusive and innovative tech landscape.

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What else to take into account

This section is for sharing any additional examples, stories, or insights that do not fit into previous sections. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

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