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Examining unequal gender distribution in software engineering

Murphy, Alex, Kelly, Ben, Bergmann, Kai, Khaletskyy, Kyrylo, O'Connor, Rory orcid logoORCID: 0000-0001-9253-0313 and Clarke, Paul orcid logoORCID: 0000-0002-4487-627X (2019) Examining unequal gender distribution in software engineering. In: 26th European and Asian Conference on Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement (EuroSPI 2019), 18-20 Sept 2019, Edinburgh, Scotland. ISBN 978-3-030-28004-8

Abstract
This paper investigates the biological, psychological and societal reasoning for the disparity of females in the software engineering industry and how a more diverse workforce can have an advantage in this sector. Studies show that diversity in a company positively correlates to its financial profits. Furthermore, a severe lack of women in software engineering causes companies to limit themselves to smaller talent pools, decrease the creative outlook on fresh ideas and resolution of problems. There are superficially inherent reasons why computing appeals to men more than women, observations in multiple reports suggest that men may have a small advantage when it comes to mathematical and problem-solving skills. Additionally, it is elsewhere suggested that females interests reside in other fields related to ‘people’, whereas males are generally more interested in ‘things’. However, while societal factors and bias plays a role in the discouragement of women from the software engineering industry, studies have shown that countries with more gender-inegalitarian societies show an increase in the number of women in software engineering and STEM. This may imply that gender disparity in software engineering primarily emerges from personal choice rather than any discrimination or stereotyping.
Metadata
Item Type:Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Event Type:Conference
Refereed:Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:Gender Distribution
Subjects:Computer Science > Software engineering
Social Sciences > Gender
DCU Faculties and Centres:DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Engineering and Computing > School of Computing
Research Initiatives and Centres > Lero: The Irish Software Engineering Research Centre
Published in: Walker, Alastair, O'Connor, Rory and Messnarz, Richard, (eds.) Proceedings of the 26th European and Asian Conference on Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement (EuroSPI 2019). Communications in Computer and Information Science 1060. Springer. ISBN 978-3-030-28004-8
Publisher:Springer
Official URL:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28005-5_51
Copyright Information:© 2019 Springer
Use License:This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. View License
Funders:Science Foundation Ireland grant 13/RC/2094 to Lero - the Irish Software Research Centre (www.lero.ie).
ID Code:23883
Deposited On:22 Oct 2019 13:49 by Thomas Murtagh . Last Modified 26 Nov 2019 14:26
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