Gender imbalance in computing
In addition to carefully designed and executed research, anecdotal examples can also be effective in exploring and understanding this challenging issue.
Abstract
The computing community as a whole has recognized for years that there are many very important reasons to strive for gender equality among those who choose computing as their educational path and professional career. Excellent scholarly work has focused on this issue from a number of perspectives (e.g., [1,2]). Organizations such as the National Center for Women in Technology (NCWIT) produce and maintain effective resources for those who want to work toward this goal [3]. A recent workshop on computing education research identified diversity in general and gender issues in particular as issues in which all subdisciplines of computing share interest [4]. In addition to carefully designed and executed research, anecdotal examples can also be effective in exploring and understanding this challenging issue. I had one of those experiences recently when our family considered summer activities for our eight-year old daughter. She had expressed interest in opportunities computing gives for creative work and so my wife and I looked for camp options that would help her explore these areas further. We were able to find several possible alternatives and found one that was particularly suitable for a variety of reasons: it offered multiple activity options (including animation, game development, and robotics), the organizing company had a solid background, and the testimonials from prior participants were positive. We did, however, pay attention to a specific detail in the promotional materials: if not all then almost all participants included in the images were boys. Given this, we asked the organizers about the gender distribution and found out that our daughter would, indeed, be the only female participant in the camp this season. Further questions revealed that the camp would have only one female counselor. This all made us pause, but because of the positives, we presented the option to our daughter who told us that she would not care about the gender imbalance. We signed her up and she had a great time at the camp. The experience gave her enjoyable and useful exposure to the use of computing for activities that are important for her. We are still very thankful for the one female counselor, whose role was instrumental in helping our daughter fit in the otherwise all-male environment. There were several lessons I learned from this experience that I believe are worth sharing.