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Software Study Explores Tech Gender Gap

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By JESSICA MINTZ, The Associated Press

Published: October 1, 2007

SEATTLE - For more than a decade, academics and technology executives have been frowning at the widening gender gap in computer science. Everyone has a theory, but no one has managed to attract many more women.

Now, some computer science researchers say one solution may lie in the design of software itself - even programs regular people use every day.

Laura Beckwith, a new computer science Ph.D. from Oregon State University, and her adviser, Margaret Burnett, specialize in studying the way people use computers to solve everyday problems - such as adding formulas to spreadsheets, animation to Web sites and styles to word processing documents.

A couple of years ago, they stumbled upon an intriguing tidbit: Men, it seemed, were more likely than women to use advanced software features, specifically ones that help users find and fix errors. Programmers call this 'debugging,' and it's a crucial step in building programs that work.
Beckwith decided to investigate why women and men might interact so differently with the same software. She pored over 30 years' worth of books and academic papers from psychologists, education researchers, economists, computer scientists and others about gender differences in problem solving and computer use.

One theory grabbed her attention: High confidence correlates with success. Both men's and women's confidence in their ability to do a challenging task affects their approach and the outcome. And most studies indicated that women - even ones who study computer science - have less confidence than men in their computer skills.

So, Beckwith wondered, could that be one of the culprits? Are women less confident than men when it comes to software debugging? Are women less willing than men to try using these advanced features?
Beckwith tackled these and other questions in her dissertation, with guidance from Burnett and Susan Wiedenbeck of Drexel University.

As a computer scientist, Beckwith wasn't interested in changing women's confidence levels. She was interested in whether changing the software could help women over this hurdle.

Although her experiments homed in on a tiny aspect of a computer user's life - debugging spreadsheets - the implications could be quite large.

Burnett, the Oregon State professor, estimates that 55 million U.S. computer users of both genders are essentially writing programs even if they don't know it - such as when they set up filters on their e-mail.

While software used by the country's 3 million professional programmers include ample debugging tools to ensure their code works as it should, the increasingly complex software used by everyday PC users doesn't.

Research such as Beckwith's may help ensure that when the industry starts adding new features for those everyday computer users, differences between men and women aren't left out of the equation.

What's more, making complex everyday software more accessible to women could help get more of them interested in computer science, Beckwith and Burnett theorize

As it is, the percentage of bachelor's degrees in computer science awarded to women fell from 37 percent in 1985 to just 22 percent in 2005, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, even as women made gains in other science and math-based fields.

Most gender-gap theories today have more to do with computer science's image as a haven for solitary male geeks. Industry groups and high-tech companies tend to suggest remedies such as mentoring girls and changing computer science education to better show how the field is connected to everyday topics thought to be of more interest to girls, such as media, sharing and communicating.

While Beckwith and Burnett acknowledge that there are numerous social and developmental factors behind the gender gap, they say their research adds a new dimension to the debate.

'The first time you as a girl sit down at a computer to do some real problem solving,' Burnett said, 'and the software you're using isn't a good fit for your learning style, your problem-solving style, how likely are you to say, 'I'm going to grow up and be a computer scientist?'

'

Julie Jacko, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and president of the Association for Computing Machinery's group on human-computer interaction, said research like Beckwith's could end up changing how young women feel about computers.

'We know from our colleagues in psychology and sociology that there are gender differences that can be very important to take into account in human-computer interaction and software design,' Jacko said. 'Projects like this can help us have a better impact, even at younger ages, where I believe interventions need to happen.'

The research may be early, but the software industry is paying attention. Beckwith's first job isn't in academia - it's at Microsoft Corp.

There, she'll put her research experience to work helping the team that designs software for programmers. That group has never given much thought to the user's gender, said Susan Todd, Beckwith's boss-to-be.

'In the past, since we concentrate so much on developers - and as you know, there are not a lot of women developers - we haven't really gone in that direction,' Todd said. But don't expect 'Excel for Women' any time soon. Beckwith and Burnett point out that there are male computer users whose learning styles and problem-solving skills have more in common with the typical female user, and vice versa.

As Burnett said, 'We're not advocating a pink version or blue version of software because that wouldn't fit anybody.'

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