TY - GEN
T1 - Inclusive Education Strategies for Diversity in Smart Workforce
AU - Geller, James
AU - Chun, Soon Ae
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 ACM.
PY - 2021/6/9
Y1 - 2021/6/9
N2 - We review the situation of women in computing professions and note that there is a mismatch between the percentage of women in computing jobs on one hand and their percentage in the population on the other. The absence of women in the computing workforce is to their detriment and the detriment of employers. Companies face difficulties when trying to fill open software positions with qualified applicants. Product teams are missing out on design input from "50% of the population."Women are denied the social mobility that well-paying computing jobs provide. Thus, improving the percentage of women in the computing workforce would be beneficial to the companies in multiple ways, to the women, and to society as whole, making it more equitable. Unfortunately, achieving this goal is a problem that has resisted decades of efforts. Only a multi-pronged approach spanning all levels of education, government and industry can lead to a breakthrough. It is especially urgent to overcome the shortage of qualified and certified middle and high school teachers. We present ongoing activities at one college to bring women into computing and to keep them in the program, and suggestions how governments at the federal and state levels can contribute to overcoming the computing teacher shortage, creating a pipeline to CS programs in colleges.
AB - We review the situation of women in computing professions and note that there is a mismatch between the percentage of women in computing jobs on one hand and their percentage in the population on the other. The absence of women in the computing workforce is to their detriment and the detriment of employers. Companies face difficulties when trying to fill open software positions with qualified applicants. Product teams are missing out on design input from "50% of the population."Women are denied the social mobility that well-paying computing jobs provide. Thus, improving the percentage of women in the computing workforce would be beneficial to the companies in multiple ways, to the women, and to society as whole, making it more equitable. Unfortunately, achieving this goal is a problem that has resisted decades of efforts. Only a multi-pronged approach spanning all levels of education, government and industry can lead to a breakthrough. It is especially urgent to overcome the shortage of qualified and certified middle and high school teachers. We present ongoing activities at one college to bring women into computing and to keep them in the program, and suggestions how governments at the federal and state levels can contribute to overcoming the computing teacher shortage, creating a pipeline to CS programs in colleges.
KW - Diversity in workforce
KW - equity in computing education
KW - women in computing
KW - workforce development
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85108165438&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85108165438&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3463677.3463741
DO - 10.1145/3463677.3463741
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85108165438
T3 - ACM International Conference Proceeding Series
SP - 264
EP - 272
BT - Proceedings of the 22nd Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research
A2 - Lee, Jooho
A2 - Pereira, Gabriela Viale
A2 - Hwang, Sungsoo
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - 22nd Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research: Digital Innovations for Public Values: Inclusive Collaboration and Community, DGO 2021
Y2 - 9 June 2021 through 11 June 2021
ER -