Attracting women to Free Software communities

There was recently a discussion on the coreboot mailing list about coreboot being more welcoming to female developers. What follows started out as a short reply and blossomed into something that was just begging to become a blog post.

I think that our discussion raises a very important question: Why should coreboot (or any Free Software project) specifically state their support for women to participate?

Semantically, saying that everyone is welcome to contribute does indeed include women as well as three-toed sloths, children, and any sentient beings we don’t know about yet. But I think it can be very welcoming for the coreboot community to mention, even if only briefly, that we are supportive of female developers.