skip to main content
10.1145/3195570.3195571acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesicseConference Proceedingsconference-collections
short-paper

Issues in gender diversity and equality in the UK

Published: 28 May 2018 Publication History

Abstract

There has been a significant increase in the number of initiatives to raise awareness of diversity-related challenges in technology worldwide within the past decade. Multiple organizations now emphasize a need for a close to 50%-50% male to female workforce distribution. Example of proposed activities include introducing quotas for women on board positions, promoting equal opportunities for employment in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) jobs and creating a woman-friendly work environment. However, despite these efforts, the growth of number of women working in STEM is still slow.
To understand the impact of various initiatives and how they influence the work environment in universities in the UK, we conducted a survey to record responses from multiple women groups, so that we can identify the issues that they have been facing. This paper presents the insights drawn from the survey, along with recommendations for STEM and computing fields in order to increase female numbers in their programs. The survey presents qualitative measures of initiatives addressing the gender gap in the UK. The results show a clear need for prominent role models, mentoring, and promoting engagement of women in STEM subjects from an early age.

References

[1]
W. Ben-Amar, M. Chang, and P. McIlkenny. 2017. Board Gender Diversity and Corporate Response to Sustainability Initiatives: Evidence from the Carbon Disclosure Project. Journal of Business Ethics 142 (2017). Issue 2.
[2]
S. Bhatia and J. Amati. 2010. If These Women Can Do It, I Can Do It, Too: Building Women Engineering Leaders through Graduate Peer Mentoring. (2010).
[3]
J. Bourke, S. Garr, A. van Berkel, and J. Wong. 2017. Diversity and inclusion: The reality gap. (2017).
[4]
European Commission. 2018. Individual Fellowships. Research and Innovation. https://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/about/individual-fellowships_en. (2018).
[5]
B. Ertl, S. Luttenberger, and M. Paechter. 2017. The Impact of Gender Stereo-types on the Self-Concept of Female Students in STEM Subjects with an Under-Representation of Females. (2017).
[6]
A. Familara. 2006. Gender and Development. (2006). Issue 2.
[7]
Ada Lovelace Festival. 2018. Connecting women in computing and technology. http://wiwo.konferenz.de/ada/en/. (2018).
[8]
N. Fouad, M. Fitzpatrick, and J. P. Liu. 2011. Persistence of Women in Engineering Careers: A Qualitative study of Current and Former Female Engineers. (2011).
[9]
Girl Geeks. 2018. https://www.girlgeeks.uk/. (2018).
[10]
C. Herring. 2009. Does diversity pay. American Sociological Review 74 (2009). Issue 2.
[11]
S. Hoogendoorn, H. Oosterbeek, and M. van Praag. 2013. The impact of gender diversity on the performance of business teams: Evidence from a field experiment. Management Science 59 (2013). Issue 7.
[12]
H. Huhman. 2012. STEM Fields And The Gender Gap: Where Are The Women? (2012).
[13]
J. Hunt. 2010. Why Do Women Leave Science and Engineering. NBER Working Paper 15853 (2010).
[14]
Women in STEM. 2018. http://www.womeninstem.co.uk/. (2018).
[15]
H. Jürges and K. Schneider. 2011. Why Young Boys Stumble: Early Tracking, Age and Gender Bias in the German School System. German Economic Review. (2011).
[16]
C. Maertz and M. Campion. 2004. Profiles in Quitting: Integrating Process and Content Turnover Theory. Academy of Management Journal 47 (2004), 566--582.
[17]
C. Mattis. 2005. Best Practices for Supporting Women Engineers Career Development in US Corporations. Edward Elgar. (2005).
[18]
McKinsey and Company. 2014. Mckinsey Gender Diversity Survey Results in organisations. (2014).
[19]
McKinsey and Company. 2015. The Power of Parity: How Advancing Womenś Equality Can Add $ 12 Trillion to Global Growth. New York. (2015).
[20]
PWC. 2017. Global Diversity and Inclusion Survey. (2017).
[21]
C. Rayburn, F. Denmark, M. Reuder, and A. Austria. 2014. A Handbook for Women Mentors: Transcending barriers of Stereotype, Race and Ethnicity. (2014).
[22]
N. Schneeweis and M Zweimüller. 2014. Early Tracking and the Misfortune of Being Young. The Scandinavian Journal of Economics. (2014).
[23]
C. M. Vogt. 2008. Faculty as a Critical Juncture in Student Retention and Performance in Engineering Programs. Journal of Engineering Education 97 (2008). Issue 1.
[24]
BCS Women. 2018. http://www.bcs.org/category/8630. (2018).

Cited By

View all
  • (2022)Designing gender-neutral software engineering program. stereotypes, social pressure, and current attitudes based on recent studiesProceedings of the Third Workshop on Gender Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Software Engineering10.1145/3524501.3527600(43-50)Online publication date: 19-May-2022
  • (2022)Towards gender balance in modern hackathonsProceedings of the Third Workshop on Gender Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Software Engineering10.1145/3524501.3527594(19-26)Online publication date: 19-May-2022
  • (2022)Professional Roles, Skills And Competences Of Female Engineers In The ICT Industry: A Case Study In Chile2022 XII International Conference on Virtual Campus (JICV)10.1109/JICV56113.2022.9934782(1-4)Online publication date: 29-Sep-2022
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
GE '18: Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Gender Equality in Software Engineering
May 2018
62 pages
ISBN:9781450357388
DOI:10.1145/3195570
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 28 May 2018

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. current trends
  2. diversity
  3. gender equality

Qualifiers

  • Short-paper

Conference

ICSE '18
Sponsor:

Upcoming Conference

ICSE 2025

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)133
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)17
Reflects downloads up to 20 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2022)Designing gender-neutral software engineering program. stereotypes, social pressure, and current attitudes based on recent studiesProceedings of the Third Workshop on Gender Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Software Engineering10.1145/3524501.3527600(43-50)Online publication date: 19-May-2022
  • (2022)Towards gender balance in modern hackathonsProceedings of the Third Workshop on Gender Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Software Engineering10.1145/3524501.3527594(19-26)Online publication date: 19-May-2022
  • (2022)Professional Roles, Skills And Competences Of Female Engineers In The ICT Industry: A Case Study In Chile2022 XII International Conference on Virtual Campus (JICV)10.1109/JICV56113.2022.9934782(1-4)Online publication date: 29-Sep-2022
  • (2019)Gender balance in computer science and engineering in Italian universitiesProceedings of the 13th European Conference on Software Architecture - Volume 210.1145/3344948.3344966(82-87)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2019

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media