The underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is a phenomenon that needs to be addressed from an educational perspective. Within the domains of computer science and engineering (CS&E) the gender imbalance is even more acute as the underrepresentation of women not only persists but has increased over the past few decades (Corbett & Hill, 2015; Master et al., 2016). In this paper a discussion of the current situation of women’s underrepresentation across broad CS&E domains is presented. This will be demonstrated through a review of research into the historical factors and institutional practices that have been ongoing barriers to the inclusion of women in CS&E. Then, a discussion of how transformational leadership theory can serve as a tool for change to help scholars better understand the present situation, and then guide practitioners in overcoming it, is presented. To this end, the paper concludes with a discussion of how diversity and inclusion ideas, based on a transformational leadership approach, can improve gender equity in CS&E. Keywords: underrepresented, women, gender, transformational, leadership

A disproportionate share of men holds leadership positions in Mexico. Relatively new studies on gender and leadership self- efficacy conducted under transformational leadership models have started to challenge the idea that gender moderates leader effectiveness. This study was developed to analyze differences in leadership self-efficacy between 80 female and 73 male MBA students in the city of Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. The results contributed to the growing number of studies on leadership self-efficacy conducted under transformational leadership models that support the claim that gender does not moderate leader effectiveness.