Connected to Stay: Gender Homophily and Its Role in Open-Source Software Developer Retention

Understanding how social connections shape participation is critical for sustaining open-source software (OSS) communities. To investigate this, we analyze longitudinal collaboration networks of 1.6 million developers over 14 years (2008–2022) using the World of Code dataset, focusing on gender homophily, developers’ preference to collaborate with others of the same gender, and its relationship to retention. We find strong evidence of gender homophily beyond demographic baselines, with same-gender ties among women exceeding random expectations by more than twice. While women tend to form homophilous ties, men show a preference for cross-gender collaboration, and these patterns shift over time as the OSS ecosystem evolves. 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. These retention effects only become visible after accounting for activity levels, consistent with prior work showing that aggregate analyses can mask true relationships. Our results suggest that homophilous ties offer social support that improves developer persistence, highlighting the importance of inclusive, gender-diverse networks for sustaining participation in OSS projects.