WRITTEN BY: JENNA ANDERSON

Dr. Lesley Shannon’s article titled “Want to Encourage Gender Diversity? Choose Your Words WISEly” has been published in the Computer Research Association’s (CRA) May 2016 issue of Computing Research News.

The article discuses the low percentage of women enrolled in undergraduate computer science degrees (only 15%) and how word choice in program recruitment webpages may be acting as a deterrent to women applicants.  Language can explicitly be gendered through the use of gendered pronouns, for example the use of ‘he’ to refer to everyone; which has been found to ostracize women. However, there are also words in the English language that may be more subtly tied to a gender, and using them can signal to your audience who the in-groups and out-groups are. Communal language (i.e. considerate, polite, responsible) is seen as being feminine whereas agentic language (i.e. ambitious, analytical, logical) is seen as being masculine. Studies have shown that when more communal language is used, women report feeling more included and there is no negative effect on men’s feeling of inclusion. Dr. Shannon therefore suggests changing the way program recruitments are written by using more communal language in the form of explaining ‘why’ a degree is important, rather than the agentic method of explaining ‘what’ a degree will do or create.

To read, “Want to Encourage Gender Diversity? Choose Your Words WISEly” by Dr. Lesley Shannon, click here!

The Computer Research Association is a non-profit association that aims to unite industry, academia and governance to advance computing research to better the world. The CRA hopes to further the field of computing by empowering research in computing and providing programs and mentorship so that computing professionals can grow to their full potential. Computing Research News is the CRA’s online publication used to inform computing researchers about the latest research and what is happening in the computing community.

Fun WWEST fact: Maria Klawe, the first chairholder of the NSERC Chair for Women in Science and Engineering Program (BC/Yukon) was one of the founders of CRA-W (Computing Research Association Women) and the first woman to be elected to the board of CRA.

For more information on gendered language, check out WWEST’s white papers on gender diversity.