Frustrations Steering Women Away From Software Engineering

Hana Frluckaj J. Herbsleb Laura A. Dabbish + 2 lainnya

7 November 2022

Open source software represents an important form of digital infrastructure as well as a pathway to technical careers for many developers, but women are drastically underrepresented in this setting. Although there is a good body of literature on open source participation, there is very little understanding of the participation trajectories and contribution experiences of women developers, and how they compare to those of men developers, in open source software projects. In order to understand their joining and participation trajectories, we conducted interviews with 23 developers (11 men and 12 women) who became core in an open source project. We identify differences in women and men's motivations for initial contributions and joining processes (e.g. women participating in projects that they have been invited to) and sustained involvement in a project. We also describe unique negative experiences faced by women contributors in this setting in each stage of participation. Our results have implications for diversifying participation in open source software and understanding open source as a pathway to technical careers.

R. Prikladnicki Karina Kohl

5 Oktober 2022

There is a known and established gender imbalance in software engineering structures. The discussions about gender diversity in Software Engineering are on the table; however, which are the benefits and the difficulties people in software development teams see in gender diversity? For this work, we conducted a survey to qualitatively understand the perceived benefits and difficulties of gender diversity in software development teams. We found out that gender-diverse workplaces are prone to have better ideas sharing, better decision making, creativity, and innovation. Respondents mentioned that some companies worked to improve the hiring process to be more gender-inclusive. Women’s support and inspiration were shared, and some men reported being touched by the subject and diligently are deconstructing their prejudice and misconceptions about women in technology. There are also difficulties. It is common to see only one woman in teams or just a few. More than that, no other gender than men and women, so the white, cisgender man is the pattern most of the time. The same pattern repeats itself in leadership positions leading to male protectionism and privileges. Additionally, other dimensions of diversity pervaded the answers, like intersectionality, race/ethnicity, ageism, and a less explored point: social vulnerability.

Sonja M. Hyrynsalmi

1 Mei 2023

In recent years, the software engineering industry has increasingly emphasized the importance of diversity and inclusion, with companies developing strategies and training programs to promote these values among employees. With more girls entering the field of software engineering and companies taking more diversity and inclusion actions, there is potential for universities to also level up their diversity and inclusion approaches in teaching. This study aims to investigate the status of diversity and inclusion approaches used in software engineering education at the university level in Finland. An online survey (N=30) was conducted among Finnish software engineering university teachers to identify commonly used approaches and case examples of diversity and inclusion, as well as challenges faced in integrating these topics into courses. The key findings indicate that while there is recognition of the importance of diversity and inclusion in software engineering education and among faculties in Finland, there is still room for improvement in the approaches used and in increasing awareness among teachers. By shedding light on these issues, this study contributes to efforts to enhance diversity and inclusion in software engineering education both in Finland and internationally.

Christoph Treude Hideaki Hata

17 Maret 2023

Implicit gender bias in software development is a well-documented issue, such as the association of technical roles with men. To address this bias, it is important to understand it in more detail. This study uses data mining techniques to investigate the extent to which 56 tasks related to software development, such as assigning GitHub issues and testing, are affected by implicit gender bias embedded in large language models. We systematically translated each task from English into a genderless language and back, and investigated the pronouns associated with each task. Based on translating each task 100 times in different permutations, we identify a significant disparity in the gendered pronoun associations with different tasks. Specifically, requirements elicitation was associated with the pronoun “he” in only 6% of cases, while testing was associated with “he” in 100% of cases. Additionally, tasks related to helping others had a 91% association with “he” while the same association for tasks related to asking coworkers was only 52%. These findings reveal a clear pattern of gender bias related to software development tasks and have important implications for addressing this issue both in the training of large language models and in broader society.

Riya Dutta Emad Shihab D. Costa + 1 lainnya

31 Januari 2023

Diversity and inclusion are necessary prerequisites for shaping technological innovation that benefits society as a whole. A common indicator of diversity consideration is the representation of different social groups among software engineering (SE) researchers, developers, and students. However, this does not necessarily entail that diversity is considered in the SE research itself.In our study, we examine how diversity is embedded in SE research, particularly research that involves participant studies. To this end, we have selected 79 research papers containing 105 participant studies spanning three years of ICSE technical tracks. Using a content analytical approach, we identified how SE researchers report the various diversity categories of their study participants and investigated: 1) the extent to which participants are described, 2) what diversity categories are commonly reported, and 3) the function diversity serves in the SE studies.We identified 12 different diversity categories reported in SE participant studies. Our results demonstrate that even though most SE studies report on the diversity of participants, SE research often emphasizes professional diversity data, such as occupation and work experience, over social diversity data, such as gender or location of the participants. Furthermore, our results show that participant diversity is seldom analyzed or reflected upon when SE researchers discuss their study results, outcome or limitations.To help researchers self-assess their study diversity awareness, we propose a diversity awareness model and guidelines that SE researchers can apply to their research. With this study, we hope to shed light on a new approach to tackling the diversity and inclusion crisis in the SE field.