Only 2 per cent of professionals working in FOSS are Women

Women working in FOSS

According to the UN "Only 2 per cent of professionals working in FOSS are women, compared to 28 per cent in proprietary software." They find this so problematic that they've, through UNESCO, have set up a community working on gender equality in FOSS.

So, is it good that there are so few women working in FOSS compared to proprietary software? The FSF should of course primarily work for the general advancement of FOSS. But if this disparity is not a good thing, shouldn't the FSF, as the primary FOSS organization, also work to try to find the reasons for this gap, and to try and close it?

If the gap is not a good thing, wouldn't closing it be good, both for the software development, the users and the community?

Women Working in Proprietary Enviornment

I would like to recommend this keynote speech by Michael Schwern (Like him I am also a white male, by the way. Just to have that out there) at the 2012 YAPC, about how the meritocracy of the FOSS community is broken. Wouldn't you say that if he is right about that, then we are getting less quality and quantity of FOSS than we could've, which means we all lose out?

Some say "this is about software and freedoms, which are not gendered, so why should we care?", but why that huge disparity then? Doesn't that indicate that there's something going on?

2% vs. 28% probably means there's a ton of really talented female programmers who for some reason chooses to go to proprietary s/w rather than Free for some reason. And since the best female developers probably are better than the average male (just like the best male devs are probably better than the average female), we are losing out.

There seems to be something about our community (because I can't believe women in general "hates Freedom") driving some of our best potential developers away and over to "the enemy". I don't know what (I'm guessing we could find out by asking the women and taking their answers seriously, though) , but shouldn't an organization dedicated to the betterment of FOSS and our community work on that?