Gender Diversity in Computer Science at a Large Public R1 Research University: Reporting on a Self-study

2022 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Monica Babeş-Vroman ◽  
Thuytien N. Nguyen ◽  
Thu D. Nguyen

With the number of jobs in computer occupations on the rise, there is a greater need for computer science (CS) graduates than ever. At the same time, most CS departments across the country are only seeing 25–30% of women students in their classes, meaning that we are failing to draw interest from a large portion of the population. In this work, we explore the gender gap in CS at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, a large public R1 research university, using three data sets that span thousands of students across six academic years. Specifically, we combine these data sets to study the gender gaps in four core CS courses and explore the correlation of several factors with retention and the impact of these factors on changes to the gender gap as students proceed through the CS courses toward completing the CS major. For example, we find that a significant percentage of women students taking the introductory CS1 course for majors do not intend to major in CS, which may be a contributing factor to a large increase in the gender gap immediately after CS1. This finding implies that part of the retention task is attracting these women students to further explore the major. Results from our study include both novel findings and findings that are consistent with known challenges for increasing gender diversity in CS. In both cases, we provide extensive quantitative data in support of the findings.

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik

Social policy matters have long been considered women’s issues. Extant research has documented a strong link between gender and the policies of the welfare state in the legislative, executive and electoral arenas. Yet what determines the strength of this association has largely been left unexplored. Drawing on tokenism theory, this article proposes gender diversity at the group level as a key explanatory factor. It hypothesizes that the gender gap in social policy diminishes as the female representation in a political party increases. To test this argument, it examines almost 8000 press releases issued by over 600 politicians during four election campaigns in Austria between 2002 and 2013. The analysis demonstrates that women talk more about social policy issues during election campaigns than men, but that this emphasis gap disappears for parties with a more equal gender balance. These results have important implications for our understanding of the politics of gender and social policy.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed I. Elghuweel ◽  
Collins G. Ntim ◽  
Kwaku K. Opong ◽  
Lynn Avison

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of corporate (CG) and Islamic (IG) governance mechanisms on corporate earnings management (EM) behaviour in Oman. Design/methodology/approach The authors employ one of the largest and extensive data sets to-date on CG, IG and EM in any developing country, consisting of a sample of 116 unique Omani listed corporations from 2001 to 2011 (i.e. 1,152 firm-year observations) and a broad CG index containing 72 CG provisions. The authors also employ a number of robust econometric models that sufficiently account for alternative CG/EM proxies and potential endogeneities. Findings First, the authors find that, on average, better-governed corporations tend to engage significantly less in EM than their poorly governed counterparts. Second, the evidence suggests that corporations that depict greater commitment towards incorporating Islamic religious beliefs and values into their operations through the establishment of an IG committee tend to engage significantly less in EM than their counterparts without such a committee. Finally and by contrast, the authors do not find any evidence that board size, audit firm size, the presence of a CG committee and board gender diversity have any significant relationship with the extent of EM. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is a first empirical attempt at examining the extent to which CG and IG structures may drive EM practices that explicitly seek to draw new insights from a behavioural theoretical framework (i.e. behavioural theory of corporate boards and governance).


2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (8) ◽  
pp. 915-924 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pipiet Larasatie ◽  
Gintare Baublyte ◽  
Kendall Conroy ◽  
Eric Hansen ◽  
Anne Toppinen

Increasing gender diversity is no longer just the right thing to do, but also the smart thing to do. Although there is general literature about gender diversity and the perspectives of females in top management and leadership, there are, however, very few forest sector specific studies. This exploratory study utilizes interviews to better understand how female executives in North America and the Nordic countries of Finland and Sweden perceive the impact of the situation of gender diversity in the forest industry. Respondents also provide career advice for young females entering or considering entry into the industry. Female executives in both regions agree that although the forest sector is still seen as a male-oriented industry, there are signs of increasingly positive attitudes regarding industry and company culture towards the benefits of greater gender diversity; however, the described changes represent an evolution, not revolution. Interestingly, despite the status of Nordic countries as leaders in bridging the gender gap, respondents from this region believe that there is significant progress yet to be made in the forest industry, especially at the entry level. With respect to career development, North American respondents suggested that young females should consider sacrificing their social life and leisure time activities, whereas Nordic respondents instead emphasized personal supports or using exit strategy from an unsupportive company or boss.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 247028971988243
Author(s):  
Mohammad Salim Abulrahman ◽  
Savriddin Khalilov

The number of information technology (IT) jobs is increasing dramatically in Iraq. This has produced an increased need for IT graduates than before. On the other hand, most IT and computer science (CS) departments in private universities are seeing small numbers of females in their courses. This indicates that these private universities have failed in attracting a sufficient percentage of female students. In this article, we explore the gender gap in IT and CS departments at 3 private universities: Tishk, Cihan, and Bayan, using 3 data sets related to the 2017 to 2018 academic year. The research design is descriptive and primary data were collected using personal observations made by the authors over the past 2 years. By analyzing these data sets, we can discover important issues such as students’ diversity in computing departments. For example, we find that a gender gap does not clearly exist in the IT department of Tishk University, while it’s more obvious in CS departments of Bayan and Cihan Universities. This finding implies that there is a need for some initiatives to attract women to IT and CS departments and to more investigate the gender gap in computing within the higher education level. These findings may also be relevant to the computing programs at other large public universities.


Author(s):  
Dhara Shah ◽  
Narendra M. Agrawal ◽  
Miriam Moeller

Purpose Despite more than 50 years of research into gender and work, the impact of female expatriates persists to be underrepresented in mainstream international human resource management (IHRM) literature. The purpose of this paper is to identify and explore the perceptions of married Indian information technology (IT) women regarding career and expatriating discussions they have with their husbands and its impact on their decision making to undertake international assignments. Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 married Indian IT women who had undertaken international assignments after marriage. The study includes two data sets, 1: women on less than one-year assignment; 2: women on greater than one-year assignments. Findings The study found that women who went on short-term assignments of less than one year travelled alone and found it fortunate and convenient to leave their children in the care of their husbands, in-laws, parents and maids. While in the cases of women travelling for longer-term assignments, most husbands accompanied them. The study suggests that while spousal support was the key, having a shared purpose with husbands along with extended family support was equally significant to facilitate women undertaking an international assignment. As an impetus, the authors note a change within the Indian society where both partners come together to make decisions about expatriating. Research limitations/implications The authors discuss the implications for IHRM as they relate to gender diversity within organisations. Originality/value The research, underpinned by the early workings of a theory of career hierarchy, explores the complexities in expatriation decision-making processes of married women from the emerging economy of India with traditional family values, who are working within a modern and liberal IT industry.


Author(s):  
Karina Mochetti

Women have always played an important role in Computer Science findings, but their importance has always been overshadowed by men. Nowadays, men outnumber women by 3 times on computing occupations in the US, but still women prove to be essential on the development of technological fields. This work intends to place women at the forefront of computer science’s history. In order to demonstrate that their work was essential for the development of current technologies, a broad historical overview is given. This overview is chronologically and thematically structured in several periods, from the early computer machines (before 1900) to our current digital society (after 2010). Finally, an outlook on the role of women in computing is given. A detailed discussion of individual contributions by women would go beyond the scope of this work. Nor can a sociological analysis of the reasons for the gender gap be provided. Nevertheless, the work wants to be more than a mere quantitative enumeration of women’s contributions to computer sciences. The essay wants to plea for the integration of these women in the literature, i.e., in the historiography of computer sciences, which requires to reconsider the self-image of this discipline.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Shafaque Fatima ◽  
Saqib Sharif

Linking with the business case for diversity, this study examines whether the top management team (TMT) and the board of directors (BODs) diversity has a positive impact on financial institution (FI) performance in select countries of Asia least researched domain. We use data from 119 financial institutions across Asia for the year 2015, initially 1,447 institutions; however, incomplete data was excluded from final analysis. We use three proxies for diversity, that is, nationality diversity, gender diversity, and age diversity of TMT and BODs. To investigate the impact of TMT and BODs diversity, cross-sectional ordinary least-squares estimation is applied, using Return on Average Assets (ROAA%) as a measure of performance.  We find that nationality diversity and age diversity is positively and significantly related to FIs performance. Our evidence indicates that executives and board members with diverse exposure and younger age improve FIs profitability. However, there is no significant relationship between gender and FIs performance.


2020 ◽  
pp. 54-62
Author(s):  
Oleksii V. Lyulyov ◽  
Oleksandra I. Karintseva ◽  
Andrii V. Yevdokymov ◽  
Hanna S. Ponomarova ◽  
Oleksandr O. Ivanov

The article describes the situation of gender equality in Ukraine and in the world during the last 5 years, identifies the leading countries in moving towards gender equality in various fields of life by analyzing the indicators of the Global Gender Gap Report of the World Economic Forum. These indicators include: Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, Political Empowerment, which are the part of a single index that determines the position of countries in the overall ranking. Based on the results of this analysis, Ukraine has improved value of gender equality index, although in the overall ranking of countries Ukraine has lost its position and dropped 11 ranks lower than in 2014. This means that, among all the countries surveyed by the World Economic Forum, there are countries that are moving much faster towards gender equality than Ukraine. In addition, the article includes the investigation of the gender representation among the board members of 5 enterprises of Ukraine for 2014-2017, which represent the leading sectors of the Ukrainian economy. The dynamics of changes in the level of performance of these enterprises using the return on assets (ROA) indicator is analyzed, the relationship between the leadership of the enterprises and the value of the ROA indicator is graphically presented. The obtained results do not give a clear answer about the gender impact on the enterprise performance. The reason for this is a number of factors, such as: insufficient statistical sampling of enterprises; the selected performance indicator of enterprise activities does not fully reflect the impact of the gender factor on enterprise activities; the methodology used in the work needs improvements, or it is necessary to choose a totally new approach to the analysis of the investigated issue under study. Gender representation among board members and its impact on enterprise performance should be investigated further. Key words: gender, gender equality, enterprise board members, return on assets.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yahya Albalawi ◽  
Jim Buckley ◽  
Nikola S. Nikolov

AbstractThis paper presents a comprehensive evaluation of data pre-processing and word embedding techniques in the context of Arabic document classification in the domain of health-related communication on social media. We evaluate 26 text pre-processings applied to Arabic tweets within the process of training a classifier to identify health-related tweets. For this task we use the (traditional) machine learning classifiers KNN, SVM, Multinomial NB and Logistic Regression. Furthermore, we report experimental results with the deep learning architectures BLSTM and CNN for the same text classification problem. Since word embeddings are more typically used as the input layer in deep networks, in the deep learning experiments we evaluate several state-of-the-art pre-trained word embeddings with the same text pre-processing applied. To achieve these goals, we use two data sets: one for both training and testing, and another for testing the generality of our models only. Our results point to the conclusion that only four out of the 26 pre-processings improve the classification accuracy significantly. For the first data set of Arabic tweets, we found that Mazajak CBOW pre-trained word embeddings as the input to a BLSTM deep network led to the most accurate classifier with F1 score of 89.7%. For the second data set, Mazajak Skip-Gram pre-trained word embeddings as the input to BLSTM led to the most accurate model with F1 score of 75.2% and accuracy of 90.7% compared to F1 score of 90.8% achieved by Mazajak CBOW for the same architecture but with lower accuracy of 70.89%. Our results also show that the performance of the best of the traditional classifier we trained is comparable to the deep learning methods on the first dataset, but significantly worse on the second dataset.


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