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Black women remain severely underrepresented in computing despite ongoing efforts to diversify the field. Given that Black women exist at the intersection of both racial and gendered identities, tailored approaches are necessary to address the unique barriers Black women face in computing. However, it is difficult to quantitatively evaluate the efficacy of interventions designed to retain Black women in computing, since samples of computing students typically contain too few Black women for robust statistical analysis. Using about a decade of student survey responses from an National Science Foundation–funded Broadening Participation in Computing alliance, we use regression analyses to quantitatively examine the connection between different types of interventions and Black women’s intentions to persist in computing and how this compares to other students (specifically, Black men, white women, and white men). This comparison allows us to quantitatively explore how Black women’s needs are both distinct from—and similar to—other students. We find that career awareness and faculty mentorship are the two interventions that have a statistically significant, positive correlation with Black women’s computing persistence intentions. No evidence was found that increasing confidence or developing skills/knowledge was correlated with Black women’s computing persistence intentions, which we posit is because Black women must be highly committed and confident to pursue computing in college. Last, our results suggest that many efforts to increase the number of women in computing are focused on meeting the needs of white women. While further analyses are needed to fully understand the impact of complex intersectional identities in computing, this large-scale quantitative analysis contributes to our understanding of the nuances of Black women’s needs in computing.
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Seeking congruity for communal and agentic goals: a longitudinal examination of U.S. college women’s persistence in STEM
Abstract An abundance of literature has examined barriers to women’s equitable representation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, with many studies demonstrating that STEM fields are not perceived to afford communal goals, a key component of women’s interest in future careers. Using Goal Congruity Theory as a framework, we tested the longitudinal impact of perceptions of STEM career goal affordances, personal communal and agentic goal endorsements, and their congruity on persistence in science from the second through fourth years of college among women in STEM majors in the United States. We found that women’s intent to persist in science were highest in the fall of their second year, that persistence intentions exhibited a sharp decline, and eventually leveled off by their fourth year of college. This pattern was moderated by perceptions of agentic affordances in STEM, such that women who believe that STEM careers afford the opportunity for achievement and individualism experienced smaller declines. We found that higher perceptions of communal goal affordances in STEM consistently predicted higher persistence intentions indicating women may benefit from perceptions that STEM affords communal goals. Finally, we found women with higher agentic affordances in STEM also had greater intentions to persist, and this relationship was stronger for women with higher agentic goals. We conclude that because STEM fields are stereotyped as affording agentic goals, women who identify interest in a STEM major during their first years of college may be drawn to these fields for this reason and may benefit from perceptions that STEM affords agentic goals.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2013318
- PAR ID:
- 10368302
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer Science + Business Media
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Social Psychology of Education
- Volume:
- 25
- Issue:
- 2-3
- ISSN:
- 1381-2890
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 649-674
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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