Encouraging Minority and Low-Income Girls to Pursue Computing through Inclusive Technology Camps

Abstract

It is no secret that there exists a great disparity between the percentages of women compared to men in any computing-related field. Traditionally, women have composed 12 to 15% of undergraduate students enrolled in computer degree programs in North America (http://cra.org/resources/taulbee-survey/). From 2000-2014, the percentage of first-year undergraduate women interested in majoring in computing declined 7% (https://www.ncwit.org/resources/numbers). As of 2014, women represented only 26% of the computing workforce. Minority women represent even less. Further actions and research need to do be done to learn what will help inspire this population, and the population of low-income women, to pursue computing as a hobby and potential career. Quite a lot of focus has been paid in recent years on attracting more women to IT careers. There are multiple reasons why it would be beneficial to have greater gender diversity in the maledominated computing profession. For example, a team with a more diverse membership is found “to produce better solutions to problems than do homogenous teams” [4]. While this illustrates the importance of including more women in IT, it’s also important to draw women from different perspectives. These perspectives include (but are not limited to) minority and low-income women. The problem is, it appears that a large part of the research data we currently have regarding women in computing-related fields represents middle class white girls and women, or does not take race, class, and other demographics factors into account when drawing conclusions. A handful of studies have focused on computing “interventions,” or short camps, that introduce computing concepts in a fun and engaging way to a diverse group of girls [1][2][3][5][6]. Results of these efforts have not come to fruition quite yet; out of the women who earned computing related bachelors degrees in 2013, a combined total of 22% were African-American (11%), Hispanic (9%), American Indian/Alaskan Native (0%), and multi-racial,not Hispanic (2%) women (http://cra.org/resources/taulbee-survey/). More targeted efforts are needed on both local and national levels to encourage minority and low-income girls to pursue an interest in computing-related fields. One way of doing this is to provide role models to show how computing is feasible and fun. GoldieBlox, a girl-focused toy company, has created an African American and Latina girl action figure in hopes to encourage young girls to get excited about STEM (http://time.com/4098641/goldieblox-ad-ruby-rails-action-figure/). More research needs to be done to reveal whether there exists a difference in values between ethnicities and income levels, and how those differences could determine, for example, the methods we should use when designing intervention programs targeting girls from different demographic groups. The purpose of our research study is to expand upon the learnings obtained from the limited research that has been published in this area as well as enhance the outreach efforts made at our own university. Our university currently conducts 1-2 day girls only summer computing camps for middle and high school girls. Like a large portion of the existing research in this area, our past camps have consisted of girls residing close to the campus (in mostly suburban and rural towns) who are also homogenous in terms of race, ethnicity, and financial need. Especially noteworthy for our geographic area is the large Native American / Alaskan Native population, relative to some other parts of North America. Despite this high population, we have not recruited a significant number of girls to our program. By partnering with a local branch of a national youth focused afterschool and community support organization, we developed a program to broaden our reach to minority and low-income girls from an area that has not traditionally been represented in our camp enrollments. Up to 30 middle school and high school girls were invited to attend one day workshops on different computing related topics. During the workshops, the girls complete a survey that enables us to gauge the girl’s interest and experience in computing related activities. After the day’s events, the girls complete an assessment activity that tests their knowledge of what they learned that day. The information that we gather during the workshops will help gain insight on how to effectively go about closing the gender gap in computing, specifically focused on minority and low-income girls. Beyond workshop content, our program includes additional support for unique circumstances encountered when working with our target demographic [3]:  The community partner would coordinate communication between the camp faculty and the girls attending, including collecting parental consent as needed. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all 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 third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). SIGMIS-CPR '16, June 02-04, 2016, Alexandria, VA, USA. ACM 978-1-4503-4203-2/16/06. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2890602.2906195