The Brazilian School Girls’ Perspectives on a Computer Science Major

Maristela Holanda,Maria Emilia Walter,Aleteia Araujo,Guilherme Ramos,Vinicius Borges,George Von Borries,Roberto Mourão

doi:10.19153/cleiej.22.2.2

Abstract

   The field of Computer Science has been of little interest for girls straight out of high school, when considering undergraduate majors in Brazil. At the University of Bras ??lia’s Department of Computer Science, female students compose less than 10% of the student body. In an effort to understand the girls’ lack of interest in computer related courses, we applied an anonymous questionnaire, from 2011 to 2014, regarding their perceptions of the field. The participants were 3707 females students who completed an anonymous questionnaire. We applied Association Rules in Data Mining and Principal Component Analysis to analyze these responses . The knowledge gained through this study could guide future research on the matter and guidelines for motivating girls to pursue careers in Computer Science.  

Highlights

In the years between 2000 and 2013, women accounted for an average of only 17% of all graduates in various Computer Science (CS) related majors in Brazil [1]
Our primary focus is the gender gap in STEM careers, so our study aims to characterize the profiles of girls who intend to enroll in undergraduate studies, especially those interested in Computer Science
In order to investigate the profile of the students who are interested in Computer Sciences, we look at how the answers to the question Would you major in Computer Science? relate to the other questions

Summary

Introduction

In the years between 2000 and 2013, women accounted for an average of only 17% of all graduates in various Computer Science (CS) related majors in Brazil [1]. This situation is distressing at one of Brazil’s largest universities, the capital’s University of Brasılia (UnB), which has over 30,000 students enrolled in its undergraduate programs. There, over the last ten years, women have accounted for only 10% of all graduates in CS majors UnB [2] Responding to these low rates of female participation in CS courses, researchers have focused on how to improve this scenario, and have proposed strategies to encourage girls to pursue a career in Computer Sciences [1, 3, 4, 5]. The event was created to discuss this theme and Brazilian governmental agencies, such as the Ministry of Science and Technology, have been calling for research projects related to the education of girls in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) majors [7]

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Conclusion