Gender and other social issues

The problem of reducing cultural and gender biases in tertiary level software engineering education is a broad based one. The roots of these biases lie not only in primary and secondary level education, but also in society at large. In addition, the continuing prevalence of cultural and gender biases have far reaching implications for the software engineering workforce of the future. In the first workshop of the gender and other social issues discussion group, the question of how cultural or gender biases can be reduced in software engineering instruction was addressed. In order to focus the discussion, it was decided to concentrate on the issue of gender, and more specifically the recruitment and retention of female students. It is widely accepted that many gender issues in this field are applicable to ethnicity as well. The group participants came from a variety of teaching backgrounds. Contact with women and students from indigenous cultures was on a variety of levels. At the University of Waikato the interest of Maori students in computer science had been encouraged in the following ways: Maori language tutorials and lab manual for 1st year applications course; projects with a Maori focus; and staff research in Maori applications described in courses where appropriate