research-article

Gender Gap in Academia: Perceptions of Female Computer Science Academics

Authors:

Katrina Falkner,

Shantel ThyerAuthors Info & Claims

ITiCSE '15: Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

Pages 111 - 116

https://doi.org/10.1145/2729094.2742595

Published: 22 June 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Despite increased attention from Universities and Industry, the low representation of female students in Computer Science undergraduate degrees remains a major issue. Recognising this issue, leading tech companies have established strong and committed diversity initiatives but have only reached up to 17\% female representation in their tech departments. The causes of the reduced attraction and retention of female students are varied and have been widely studied, advancing the understanding of why female students do not take up or leave Computer Science. However, few analyses look at the perceptions of the females that have stayed in the field. In this paper, we explore the viewpoints of female academics and postgraduate students in Computer Science with various undergraduate backgrounds and pathways into academia. Our analysis of their interviews shows the influence of family, exposure, culture, sexism and gendered thought on their perceptions of the field, and of themselves and their peers. We identify that perceptions of identity conflict and a lack of belonging to the discipline persist even for these high-performing professionals.

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Cited By

Cutrupi C(2024)Human-Centered Interventions to Empower Gender Diversity in Software EngineeringProceedings of the 28th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering10.1145/3661167.3661182(494-499)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3661167.3661182
Altin RMühling AMonga MLonati VBarendsen ESheard JPaterson J(2024)Why Female Students Are Dropping out of CS ProgramsProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3649217.3653635(304-310)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649217.3653635
Hamilton MHol ARichardson JMcGovern J(2024)Computer Science Undergraduate Programs in AustraliaACM Inroads10.1145/364481615:1(18-26)Online publication date: 20-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1145/3644816
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Index Terms

Gender Gap in Academia: Perceptions of Female Computer Science Academics
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
        Information science education

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ITiCSE '15: Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

June 2015

370 pages

ISBN:9781450334402

DOI:10.1145/2729094

Conference Chair:
Valentina Dagienė
Vilnius University, Lithuania
,
Program Chairs:
Carsten Schulte
Berlin Freie University, Germany
,
Tatjana Jevsikova
Vilnius University, Lithuania

Copyright © 2015 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Bilkent University: Bilkent University
SIGCSE: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 22 June 2015

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ITICSE '15

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Bilkent University
SIGCSE

ITICSE '15: Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education Conference 2015

July 4 - 8, 2015

Vilnius, Lithuania

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ITiCSE '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 54 of 124 submissions, 44%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 552 of 1,613 submissions, 34%

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Cited By

Cutrupi C(2024)Human-Centered Interventions to Empower Gender Diversity in Software EngineeringProceedings of the 28th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering10.1145/3661167.3661182(494-499)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3661167.3661182
Altin RMühling AMonga MLonati VBarendsen ESheard JPaterson J(2024)Why Female Students Are Dropping out of CS ProgramsProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3649217.3653635(304-310)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649217.3653635
Hamilton MHol ARichardson JMcGovern J(2024)Computer Science Undergraduate Programs in AustraliaACM Inroads10.1145/364481615:1(18-26)Online publication date: 20-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1145/3644816
Fietta VNavarin NMonaro MGaggi O(2023)Women and Gender Disparities in Computer Science: A Case Study at the University of PaduaProceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on Information Technology for Social Good10.1145/3582515.3609521(82-91)Online publication date: 6-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3582515.3609521
Buffum P(2023)Social Impacts of a Global Pandemic in a Gender-Balanced Data Structures Course2023 Conference on Research in Equitable and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT)10.1109/RESPECT60069.2023.00021(64-71)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/RESPECT60069.2023.00021
Barbour KBarbour K(2023)Software EngineersWomen and Persona Performance10.1007/978-3-031-33152-7_4(63-86)Online publication date: 24-Jul-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33152-7_4
Franzoni V(2023)Gender Differences and Bias in Artificial IntelligenceGender in AI and Robotics10.1007/978-3-031-21606-0_2(27-43)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21606-0_2
Özçınar H(2022)A Brief Discussion on Incentives and Barriers to Computational Thinking EducationResearch Anthology on Computational Thinking, Programming, and Robotics in the Classroom10.4018/978-1-6684-2411-7.ch012(253-269)Online publication date: 2022
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-2411-7.ch012
Yamamoto JFrachtenberg E(2022)Gender Differences in Collaboration Patterns in Computer SciencePublications10.3390/publications1001001010:1(10)Online publication date: 24-Feb-2022
https://doi.org/10.3390/publications10010010
Belland BKim CZhang ALee EDinc E(2022)Classifying the quality of robotics-enhanced lesson plans using motivation variables, word count, and sentiment analysis of reflectionsContemporary Educational Psychology10.1016/j.cedpsych.2022.102058(102058)Online publication date: Feb-2022
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