Breaking Barriers: Investigating the Sense of Belonging Among Women and Non-Binary Students in Software Engineering

Women in computing were among the first programmers in the early 20th century and were substantial contributors to the industry. Today, men dominate the software engineering industry. Research and data show that women are far less likely to pursue a career in this industry, and those that do are les...

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Published in2024 IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training (ICSE-SEET) pp. 93 - 103
Main Authors Boman, Lina, Andersson, Jonatan, de Oliveira Neto, Francisco Gomes
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published ACM 14.04.2024
Subjects
Employment
Engineering profession
Gender Equality
Gender Studies
Genusstudier
Industries
Instruments
Sense of Belonging
Software
Software Engineering Education
Surveys
Training
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Summary:Women in computing were among the first programmers in the early 20th century and were substantial contributors to the industry. Today, men dominate the software engineering industry. Research and data show that women are far less likely to pursue a career in this industry, and those that do are less likely than men to stay in it. Reasons for women and other underrepresented minorities to leave the industry are a lack of opportunities for growth and advancement, unfair treatment and workplace culture. This research explores how the potential to cultivate or uphold an industry unfavourable to women and non-binary individuals manifests in software engineering education at the university level. For this purpose, the study includes surveys and interviews. We use gender name perception as a survey instrument, and the results show small differences in perceptions of software engineering students based on their gender. Particularly, the survey respondents anchor the values of the male software engineer (Hans) to a variety of technical and non-technical skills, while the same description for a female software engineer (Hanna) is anchored mainly by her managerial skills. With interviews with women and non-binary students, we gain insight on the main barriers to their sense of ambient belonging. The collected data shows that some known barriers from the literature such as tokenism, and stereotype threat, do still exist. However, we find positive factors such as role models and encouragement that strengthen the sense of belonging among these students.
ISBN:9798400704987
ISSN:0270-5257
2832-7578
DOI:10.1145/3639474.3640072