GENDER AND DIVERSITY IN EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS FOR COMPUTER SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS

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GENDER AND DIVERSITY IN EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS
FOR COMPUTER SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS
Prof. Dr. Susanne Ihsen
1
, Prof. Dr. Sabina Jeschke
2
,
Dipl.-Phys. Mark Wilke
2
, Anna Buschmeyer M.A.
1
1
Gender Studies in Engineering, Munich University of Technology, Theresienstr. 90, D-
80290 Munich, Germany (ihsen@tum.de)
2
Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Berlin University of Technology, Straße des 17. Juni
136, D-10623 Berlin (sabina.jeschke@math.tu-berlin.de)
Abstract
The importance of software in support of and even controlling every-day and professional processes
is constantly increasing. One central prerequisite vital for fulfilling the growing requirements
imposed on software lies in the adequate consideration of the heterogeneous target user groups.
Integration of gender and diversity concepts is commonly based on one of two basic approaches: an
extended target user group orientation (“user perspective”) or an analysis of the actual development
process involved in the creation of the software (“development perspective”). While many past
studies have concentrated on the analysis of the user-perspective, the impact and relevance of the
development process on quality and innovative ability is quickly becoming obvious.
To reach a sustainable integration if gender and diversity aspects in engineering education and
software development the producers have to be trained and the topic has to be included into curricula
for engineers and computer scientists. Examples from engineering education at the Technische
Universität München (TUM) will be given in chapter two, the influence of Gender and Diversity on
German University Research in chapter three, possible research on the changing profession is
included in chapter four, followed by some conclusions.
Keywords: Information Technology, Software Development and Software Engineering,
Gender and Diversity in Computer Sciences and Engineering, Innovative Educational Project
1. INTRODUCTION
The lack of participation of women in the technologically oriented fields has a direct impact
on technology itself both in the quality and the variety of the resulting products, particularly
in the German and English speaking countries. At the moment the Association of German
Engineers shows that about 70.000 out of 643.000 engineers in Germany are female. At the
same time more than 20.000 vacant jobs waiting to be filled by an engineer, while about 12%
female engineers are unemployed [all data 1]. More women in the engineering profession
could change the situation, a more gender sensitive atmosphere and more family friendly
structures inside companies have the chance to really improve the situation for men and
women. To reach this, engineers have to face the topics of gender and engineering.
Approaches to include the topic into engineering education will be shown in this article.

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Technical inventions and products can only be as good as their creators. A lack of
participation of women in the process can result in sub-optimal or even faulty development
of products, as it limits all considerations to the male perspective only. Society as a whole
suffers from the resulting disadvantages. The lack of “diversity” in the conception and
development of technology limits the existing potential for ideas, innovation and quality of
products, reducing the competitiveness of a business. Within this context, the under-
representation of women in the fields of the computer sciences and information technology,
as well as engineering, is showing an increasing impact.
The current developments outlined above result in new requirements for education:
international competitiveness demands a resolution of the current lack of skilled labour in the
technological fields, at least for the high-wage-economies. This scarceness of skilled labour
is a direct result of both recent demographic changes and the competition for students
between the different fields of studies, a competition currently lost by the technological fields
and the natural sciences, despite increasing numbers of university-level students. Thus, we
face an insufficient number of students in general and of women in particular in these fields.
As a result, it is becoming increasingly difficult to form the necessary “mixed teams” that are
expected by companies. The introduction of mixed teams is based on the strategy of
managing diversity, which is becoming a key component for economic success.
Diversity Management means that the diversity of employees of a company is not only
recognized but also very much valued. It is more than anti-discrimination - it is a strategy to
include the knowledge and life experience different people bring into a group of developers
for example [2]. Thus, it is not wanted anymore to work with homogeneous – mostly male –
groups of engineers, who are all in the same age and have the same ethnic background, but to
include different genders, ethnics and age groups into the “mixed teams”. This of course has
influence on the company’s culture. Usually companies that are than searching for women
have to change their policies into more family friendly strategies, those who want to include
more older people have to chance their recruitment strategies and so on. In Germany and
other European countries, especially when the engineering field is concerned, gender is the
most important criterion to change, because companies are facing a lack of women engineers,
which they want to recruit to their teams.
Diversity in product development means that, as describes above, mixed teams lead to a
better product development as more target groups can be reached as possibly customers,
because different needs are already visible in the production process.
Because of this development gender perspectives and diversity concepts have to become an
integral part in the future shaping of universities, in particular in the conception of scientific
and engineering-oriented courses. Here the future engineers and scientists are educated to
enter the labour market with fresh ideas and open to new structures. While programmes
directly addressing young women have already become common practice for many
internationally operating businesses, universities have often claimed that technology-oriented
study courses are already neutral in content and do not require any gender-oriented changes
in their culture. But by now they are opening towards gender – meaning often better
inclusion if women on the one hand and integrating gender into research projects as part of
product development on the other side.

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But, as diversity is based on considering a number of different perspectives on a given
problem, it has to be taken into account that these perspectives are based on different “mental
models”. Mental models are inherent in the different groups of developers, influenced by
gender, age, or different cultural and social backgrounds. The idea of mental models has first
been developed by Craik in 1943 [3] but was not further used until the 1980s, when two
books were published, both with the title “Mental Models” [4], [5]. Today the idea of mental
models is among others used in software development and web design as well as usability
engineering and Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI). Mental models are described as
“internal scale-model representation of an external reality. It is built on-the-fly, from
knowledge of prior experience, schema segments, perception, and problem-solving
strategies.” [6]. This means that persons develop different mental models because their
experiences are different. This also means that men and women develop different mental
models, because they are growing up in different circumstances, with different experiences
and thus are having different strategies of problem-solving. These differences in the
formation of models result directly in specific choices in education, such as the preferred
style of teaching, the representation of content and the (inter)disciplinary composition of the
curricula. In addition, the demand for a diverse composition of the development teams places
increased requirements on the social skills of the team members, in particular on their
cooperation and communication skills, requirements that have to be addressed in their
education and training. The problem is to say how different mental models develop because
they are developed unconsciously and nothing people usually know about. To find out about
the mental models and to use them into engineering education further research has to be
done.
Our educational system has to undergo extensive changes to attract more women into the
scientific and engineering fields of studies. One basic requirement for these reforms in the
educational system has to be a well-founded understanding of the impact of different mental
processes on the different areas of future technological development. Thinking about these
topics led to the introduction of gender as an integral part of the Technische Universität
München, represented by the professorship Gender Studies in Engineering. Examples for
their education program will be given in the following chapter.
2. GENDER IN EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS FOR ENGINEERS
The Technical University of Munich (TUM) is anxious to keep the high quality of their
graduates, to be evaluated in an international quality level and to offer its students an
excellent study programme with an international degree. Decisions were made for the
programmes themselves and about the relevance of non technical aspects in the engineering
curriculum. Different from the discussions years before, everyone is convinced that non
technical aspects have to be an integrated part of engineering education and to be placed in
the Bachelor programmes. In this context the professorship “Gender Studies in Engineering”
developed elements of a curriculum for electrical engineering and information technology,
which gives female and male students information and practical experience about their future
engineering profession. Lecture courses and seminars are held about qualifying topics that
are relevant next to the technical needs engineers have. The seminar and lecture course are
called “non-technical requirements in the engineering profession”. Students are learning,

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which qualifications they need in addition to their technical education, when they enter the
labour market. The topics gender and diversity are part of this program and integrated into
the study program at several points.
Furthermore, Gender Studies offers two-day seminars. One is on communication skills, one
on successful team work and one on the application process – all three are oriented on the
needs of engineers. In different working sessions and tasks gender and diversity is integrated,
confronting the mostly male participants with these topics and training them in lively team
work situations. In these lectures and seminars 30-100 students learn to organize themselves
and their learning processes, work in small groups on presentations, present the results in
front of the auditorium and get a feedback from their student cooperation partners. They get
an understanding about teaching and learning and about the organisation of learning
processes. The ability to reflect one’s own action, with the inclusion of the evaluation of
action in a general situation, is part of the learning in these seminars. The concept is based on
the action theory of Kurt Levin [7], which is characterised by the fact that the development of
interaction to reach self-put goals is observed, analysed and trained. This is how participants
can realise how for example the experience of a successful self-organised project can lead to
a highly motivating situation during a seminar.
The seminar takes personal aspects into account, to reach a possibility of action. Boarders
towards unconscious, un-reflected actions get visible and the participants learn that
unconsciousness and their own emotions are always accessible. Combined methods support
the “life long learning” in group processes. The seminars themselves are experienced as
examples of learning in self-organised groups and are a starting point for the further
possibilities of project work.
Through the Carl von Linde Akademie, an academy of TUM, additional seminars for women
in engineering study programs only are offered. In an extraordinary lecture series, different
speakers give lectures on gender and diversity in technical development. This series is also
opened for all engineering students and teachers at TUM. The topics are: „Gender and
diversity in technical development and innovation politics”, „gender neutral personnel
recruiting“, and „changes in the professional life of engineers“. All these teaching approaches
are supposed to train future engineers additional skills that are by now required from the
industry and an important part of engineering education. Gender and Diversity knowledge is
a very strong part of these skills as today in nearly all huge companies these topics are on the
agenda.
Next to teaching gender is more and more becoming a part in research, as can be seen from
the following examples.
3. THE INFLUENCE OF GENDER AND DIVERSITY ON UNIVERSITY LEVEL –
AN EXAMPLE OF THE TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITÄT MÜNCHEN
In the German excellence initiative gender was seen as an important part of the application
process. At the Technische Universität München the Department of Gender Studies in
Engineering took over the coordination of this part for all three funding lines (Clusters of
Excellence: “CoTeSys – Cognition for Technical Systems” and “Origin and structure of the
Universe“, Graduate School “IGSSE – International Graduate School of Science and
Engineering” and Future Concept of the University “The entrepreneurial University”). In all
funding lines the team of Gender Studies in Engineering and the “technical” applicants
worked closely together, which lead to a gender concept, heading all three funding lines. All

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gender issues chapters work with target agreements that are supposed to raise the percentage
of female participants in the technical professions involved. All successful participants will
engage in non gender-biased recruitment, promotion and support for young researchers.
Furthermore they will all support programs motivating young girls to become engineers and
scientist and enable men and women engineers to live a better life-work-balance in their
professional life by expanding child care facilities, founding a dual career centre and
integrate family oriented work times.
4. POSSIBLE RESEARCH ON A CHANGING PROFESSION WITH REGARD TO
GENDER AND DIVERSITY
From the named developments new requirements for the professional system emerge. To
claim international competitiveness, new jobs have to be developed to stop the growing lack
of specialists in the engineering field in Germany. At the same time more research groups are
planning with mixed teams nowadays because this often leads to more effectiveness in
development processes. This means that women need the same opportunity as men to enter
the field, because recently there are far less women studying engineering and working in
science and engineering fields. Research has shown that more interdisciplinary research is
usually more attractive to women. Following these theses new interdisciplinary occupational
images have to be formed – changing job profiles for men and women.
Especially research areas in which different disciplines come together, for example software
development and engineering (like this is the case the new German excellence clusters) the
aim is to train new scientists that have competences in different fields. New job descriptions
will emerge from the necessity of finding an interface between the disciplines. This can on
the long run lead to new study programs, which are more interdisciplinary than existing ones.
Because this job profile does not exist at the moment, we see a chance to develop new
structures, which are not gendered yet and can attract men and women alike.
5. CONCLUSIONS
Gender and Diversity elements can be included at many different points of the educational
system in engineering education and education of computer scientists. Following the
examples of TUM, gender will become an integral part in the Universities in the future,
which will lead to better chances for women in these subjects, to a better inclusion of many
different target groups and a change in the engineering professional culture. For many
companies it is already clear that a change has to happen, if the lack of technical experts has
to be stopped. While companies today are searching for mixed teams, and introducing
concepts like managing diversity, the task of universities is, to integrate gender and diversity
aspects into research and education as shown with these examples, to train the future
engineers in these fields.

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References
1
VDI 2007. www.vdi.de
2
Vedder, Günther (2007) http://www.uni-trier.de/uni/fb4/apo/diversity.html, checked
25.4.2007
3
Craik, K.J.W. “The Nature of Explanation”, Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press
(1943)
4
Johnson-Laird, P.N. “Mental Models – Towards a Cognitive Science of Language,
Interference and Consciousness” Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press (1983)
5
Gentner, D. and Stevens, A. L. (Ed.) “Mental Models” Hillsdale NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates (1983)
6
Davidson, Mary Jo/Dove, Laura/Weltz, Julie “Mental Models and Usability”
www.lauradove.info/reports/mental%20models.htm (1999) (Checked 20.4.2007)
7
Ihsen, Susanne (1999): Zur Entwicklung einer neuen Qualitätskultur in
ingenieurwissenschaftlichen Studiengaengen. Ein prozessbegleitendes Interventionskonzept.
VDI-Fortschritt-Berichte, Reihe 16, Nr. 112, Duesseldorf
Curricula Vitae
Prof. Dr. Susanne Ihsen, Born 1964, studied in Social Sciences in Duisburg and Aachen. She
was doctoral student at the Centre for Research and Development in Higher
Education/Department of Informatics in Mechanical Engineering in Aachen where she got her
PhD in 1999. From 1999 till 2004 she was Manager at the Association of German Engineers
(VDI). In December 2004 she became the first professor for Gender Studies in Engineering at
the Technische Universität München. Her main research fields are Sustainability in the
engineering profession, the development of a changed image of the engineering professions,
careers of female engineers, gender and diversity in companies and university and engineering
education with regards to gender and diversity.
Prof. Dr. Sabina Jeschke Studied mathematical physics in Berlin and finished her PhD in
2004, with the thesis on “Mathematics in virtual Rooms” in Berlin. From 1997 until 2005 she
was scientific employee at Technical University of Berlin, where she was leading different
projects on e-learning and e-research. From 2000 until 2001 she was a visiting/assistant
professor at Department of Mathematics, Georgia Tech/Georgia/USA. Science 2005 she is
Junior professor for “new media and new technologies at TU Berlin and leading the
Zentrums für „Multimedia in Lehre und Forschung“ (MuLF) (Center of multimedia in
education and research).
Anna Buschmeyer, M.A., born 1978, is scientific employee at the professorship “Gender
Studies in Engineering” at the Technische Universität München since December 2005. She

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studied Sociology, English language and Linguistics in Bremen, Münster, Nijmegen and
Potsdam and is now researching on masculinity in technical professional cultures (PhD), on
the fact that there are not more women in engineering subjects in Germany, and how this
could be changed. Furthermore she is studying on the problem of combining career and
family in the engineering profession for men and women. Anna Buschmeyer is giving
courses for engineering students in communication skills and group work.
Marc Wilke studied Informatics at the Technical University of Berlin and is scientific
employee at the professorship for “new media and new technologies at TU Berlin Zentrums
für „Multimedia in Lehre und Forschung“ (MuLF) (Center of multimedia in education and
research).