Yearning to Give Back: Searching for Social Purpose in Computer Science and Engineering

Abstract

Computing is highly segregated and stratified by gender. While there is abundant scholarship investigating this problem, emerging evidence suggests that a hierarchy of value exists between the social and technical dimensions of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) and this plays a role in the underrepresentation of women in the field. This ethnographic study of women's experiences in computing offers evidence of a systemic preference for the technical dimensions of computing over the social and a correlation between gender and social aspirations. Additionally, it suggests there is a gap between the exaltation of computing's social contributions and the realities of them. My participants expressed a yearning to contribute to the collective well-being of society using their computing skills. I trace moments of rupture in my participants' stories, moments when they felt these aspirations were in conflict with the cultural values in their organizations. I interpret these ruptures within a consideration of yearning, a need my participants had to contribute meaningfully to society that remained unfulfilled. The yearning to align one's altruistic values with one's careers aspirations in CSE illuminates an area for greater exploration on the path to realizing gender equity in computing. I argue that before a case can be made that careers in computing do indeed contribute to social and civil engagements, we must first address the meaning of the social within the values, ideologies and practices of CSE institutions and next, develop ways to measure and evaluate the field's contributions to society.

Broadening Participation and Success in AP CSA: Predictive Modeling from Three Years of Data

“…With a lineage of research over twenty years showcasing multiple dimensions that decrease female participation, interest, aspiration, and success in CS at the K-12 and post-secondary levels [5,6,18,29,31,34,39], the findings presented here on the persistence of gender disparity are disconcerting, indeed. The data also suggests, though, that racial disparities are plausibly ameliorated when AP CS A was scaled in Chicago, and that there are preliminary courses that can improve success on the AP CS A exam (i.e., ECS).…”

Majorism: Neoliberalism in Student Culture

“…Rigor in engineering is synonymous with “objectivity, math‐intensiveness, empiricism/positivism and reductionism” (Riley 2017, 254). This helps explain why, as a Liberal Arts student noted in a group interview: “Everybody thinks math is harder, or science is harder.” Rigor, in general, denotes a concern with precision, challenge, and a demanding commitment to exactness, often with differential impacts on women in technology‐based organizations who, already burdened with gender discrimination, feel the weight of these demands more acutely (Carrigan 2017).…”

“…This means that the hierarchies between social and technical fields are highly gendered, established and maintained by cultural pressures and expectations (Cech 2013b; Faulkner 2000a). Masculinity, technology, and the marriage between them (Faulkner 2000b; Riley 2017; Carrigan 2017) construct the frames by which students view their education, influence the ways they reproduce majorism according to neoliberal interests, and therefore, need deeper examination.…”

Disciplinary Field Specificity and Variation in the STEM Gender Gap

“…For the most part, such work focuses only on one particular subfield, irrespective of other fields. For example, according to Canney and Bielefeldt (2015), women in engineering and computing often indicate a desire to use technical knowledge to solve social problems (Canney & Bielefeldt, 2015;Carrigan, 2017;Margolis & Fisher, 2003); they also found that among the women in their study, this desire decreases over time. On the contrary, research has shown women in biology to indicate a persistent aspiration to address the human condition, which is linked to their desire to pursue careers primarily in medicine and healthcare (Hill, Corbett, & St. Rose, 2010;Sax et al, 2018;Wang, Degol, & Ye, 2015;Woodcock et al, 2013).…”