Gender Equity in Computing: International Faculty Perceptions and Current Practices

In many countries serious effort has been put into developing and running programs that encourage girls to enjoy learning programming. At school level, many girls have done very well in these experiences, but despite their confidence and enthusiasm for programming at the time of the intervention, few have continued on to enroll in tertiary computing programs. In higher education institutions, numerous equity initiatives have attempted to improve both recruitment and retention, yet the pipeline continues to shrink. The running of interventions takes effort on the part of the academics to develop and much time, often in vacation periods, to deliver. As the success of these programs frequently relies on the goodwill of faculty, the authors formed an international multi-disciplinary working group to explore faculty attitudes and perceptions of these gender equity programs, and identify key features of enduring programs. In this paper, we gather and critically review existing literature resources with the aim of developing evaluation guidelines for the running of intervention programs from primary school to university education in order to encourage girls of all ages to seriously consider the prospect of undertaking a computing degree and to better support them during this time. Additionally, we explore the perceptions of faculty towards gender equity and gender equity programs, and discuss how faculty perceptions align with research findings. Our findings identify a clear need for gender equity programs, more consistent evaluation of the effectiveness of such programs including gathering, analysing and storing longitudinal data and more widespread dissemination of gender equity information to faculty.