Underrepresentation of women in computer systems research
Publication type
journal article
Publication date
2022
Author(s)
Frachtenberg, E.
Kaner, R.D.
Language
English
View point(s)
Institutional
Discipline(s)
Abstract
The gender gap in computer science (CS) research is a well-studied problem, with an estimated ratio of 15%–30% women researchers. However, far less is known about gender representation in specific fields within CS. Here, we investigate the gender gap in one large field, computer systems. To this end, we collected data from 72 leading peer-reviewed CS conferences, totalling 6,949 accepted papers and 19,829 unique authors (2,946 women, 16,307 men, the rest unknown). We combined these data with external demographic and bibliometric data to evaluate the ratio of women authors and the factors that might affect this ratio. Our main findings are that women represent only about 10% of systems researchers, and that this ratio is not associated with various conference factors such as size, prestige, double-blind reviewing, and inclusivity policies. Author research experience also does not significantly affect this ratio, although author country and work sector do. The 10% ratio of women authors is significantly lower than the 16% in the rest of CS. Our findings suggest that focusing on inclusivity policies alone cannot address this large gap. Increasing women’s participation in systems research will require addressing the systemic causes of their exclusion, which are even more pronounced in systems than in the rest of CS. © 2022 Frachtenberg, Kaner. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Journal
PLoS ONE
ISSN
1932-6203
Volume
17
Issue
4
Pagination
266439