The Brazilian School Girls’ Perspectives on a Computer Science Major

Authors

  • Maristela Holanda University of Brasilia
  • Roberto Mourão
  • Guilherme Ramos
  • Aleteia Araujo
  • Maria Emilia Walter
  • Vinicius Borges
  • George von Borries University of Brasília, Department of Statistics

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.19153/cleiej.22.2.2

Keywords:

girls, women, computer science

Abstract

The field of Computer Science has been of little interest for girls straight out of high school, when considering undergraduate majors in Brazil. At the University of Bras ??lia’s Department of Computer Science, female students compose less than 10% of the student body. In an effort to understand the girls’ lack of interest in computer related courses, we applied an anonymous questionnaire, from 2011 to 2014, regarding their perceptions of the field. The participants were 3707 females students who completed an anonymous questionnaire. We applied Association Rules in Data Mining and Principal Component Analysis to analyze these responses . The knowledge gained through this study could guide future research on the matter and guidelines for motivating girls to pursue careers in Computer Science.

Front page for Vol 22 issue 2

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Published

2020-02-26

Issue

Vol. 22 No. 2 (2019): Special Issue on Women in Computing in Latin America

Section

Articles

License

CLEIej is supported by its home institution, CLEI, and by the contribution of the Latin American and international researchers community, and it does not apply any author charges whatsoever for submitting and publishing. Since its creation in 1998, all contents are made publicly accesibly. The current license being applied is a (CC)-BY license (effective October 2015; between 2011 and 2015 a (CC)-BY-NC license was used).