Systematic Literature Review of Gender and Software Engineering in Asia
Hironori Washizaki, “Systematic Literature Review of Gender and Software Engineering in Asia,” Asia-Pacific Software Engineering and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (APSEDEI) workshop collocated with APSEC 2022, December 6th, 2022
Systematic Literature Review of Gender and Software Engineering in Asia Hironori Washizaki Waseda University / National Institute of Informatics / SYSTEM INFORMATION / eXmotion [email protected] 1 Asia-Pacific Software Engineering and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (APSEDEI) workshop collocated with APSEC 2022, December 6th, 2022
Background and related work • Objective: It is important to discuss the role, difficulties, and opportunities concerning people of different gender in SE. • Existing literature reviews • Gender-inclusive requirements engineering [2] • Perceived diversity in SE [3] • Diversity and agile methodologies [4] • SE in digital transformation and diversity [5] • It is unclear how research and practices in Asia exist for handling gender aspects in SE. 2 [2] D. Albuquerque, et al. “A sustainability requirements catalog for the social and technical dimensions,” ER 2021 [3] G. Rodriguez-Perez, et al. “Perceived diversity in software engineering: a systematic literature review,” EMSE 26(5) 2021 [4] K. K. Silveira and R. Prikladnicki, “A systematic mapping study of diversity in software engineering: a perspective from the agile methodologies,” CHASE 2019 [5] H. Washizaki, “Software engineering in digital transformation and diversity: Preliminary literature review,” COMPSAC 2022 DX and digitalization Diversity and inclusiveness DX4DI DI4DX Software engineering • Development in general • Design and integration https://asia.fes.de/news/gender-icons
Motivation • Cultures and people in Asia and particular regions are different from other regions in many ways that would affect gender aspects. • It is worth grasping the big picture of research and practices related to gender aspects reported by researchers and practitioners in Asia. • We performed a systematic literature review (SLR) to collect research and practices about gender aspects in software development and study reported by researchers and practitioners in Asia. 3 https://university.sunway.edu.my/explore/spotlightonresearch/Toshiba-International-Foundation- Grant-2022-Funds-the-Asian-Culture-of-Health-Framework
Research questions • RQ1. How does academic literature address gender aspects in software development and engineering in Asia? • To answer this question, we conducted a literature review of the academic literature. We analyzed the 32 identified papers with respect to countries and publication years among 463 publications. • RQ2. What are the overall trends of software engineering research and practices about gender aspects in Asia? • To answer this question, we identified topics and classified them into seven categories varying from personal mental health and team building to an organization and gender aspects. • RQ3. What are the possible research directions? • To answer this question, we summarized the remaining issues and suggested future directions. 4
Systematic literature review (SLR) • SLR aims to assess scientific papers and group concepts around a topic. • We chose Scopus as the search engine. • (1) Initial Search => 463 papers • We executed the following query on titles, abstracts, and keywords of papers regardless of time and subject area. • (2) Impurity Removal => 98 • Due to the nature of the involved data source, the search results included entities that are not research papers. • (3) Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria => 32 • For each paper, we vetted whether they should be included in our SLR by applying the following criteria • Inclusion: Gender aspects in SE research, practices, and education • Exclusion: Software handling gender information, Gender biases in software- supported tasks • (4) Data Extraction • Publication title, publication year, publication venue, author affiliation countries, and topics addressed 5
RQ1. How does academic literature address gender aspects in software development and engineering in Asia? • 13 papers were written by authors from Pakistan and Malaysia. • However, almost all of them have been written by the same author group, so it does not necessarily imply active gender research over organizations in these countries. • Other major countries are China, India, and Turkey. • Researchers and practitioners from various different organizations are actively working on gender research and practices in these countries. • It might reflect that there are much gender and cultural diversity in these countries compared with others. 6
RQ1. How does academic literature address gender aspects in software development and engineering in Asia? (cont.) • Figure shows the annual trend in the number of papers. • Most papers are from 2011 or later, indicating that gender initiatives are emerging in response to the recent increase in social awareness of diversity in the last decade. 7 Gender initiatives are emerging in the last decade. 32 academic papers related to gender aspects in software development and engineering were reported from Asia. Researchers and practitioners from various different organizations are actively working on gender research and practices in some countries, including China, India, and Turkey.
RQ2. What are the overall trends of software engineering research and practices about gender aspects in Asia? • We identified topics and classified them into seven major categories. 8 Topic Content Major findings and practices Team building (14 papers) Team’s gender diversity and software engineering- related task performance • Effect of gender differences on the teams' performance and project activities is negligible. • Male-lead groups were found convenient with both genders but female-lead groups looked much comfortable with only female members. • When the female is the minority group in a team, contacts among members contribute to reducing male members' implicit gender biases. SE education (6) Gender differences in software engineering-related education outcomes, including single-gender classrooms due to religious and cultural policies. • Error finding strategies are independent of gender. • The impact of gender-segregation on the overall performance of software engineering classes was in favor of single-gender setting. • Female-only group achievements in the final exam were better than mixed group. SE major and job (3) Gender and motivation of software engineering-related majors and jobs • Hinder growth of females in CS related job market is mainly driven by social factors. • Girls Coding Day
RQ2. What are the overall trends of software engineering research and practices about gender aspects in Asia? (cont.) 9 Topic Content Major findings and practices OSS and community (3 papers) Gender diversity (especially participation of women) in OSS development as well as community support • Lack of participation and contributions from women in OSS innovation creates an imbalanced population in the OSS-based knowledge demography and an unbalanced proportion of gender distribution. • Gender of Meetup group organizer affects gender distribution of group members and event participants. Mental health (2) Gender, mental health, and pressure in SE • Male had higher mental well-being score than their counterpart Female. Organization (2) Organizational human resource development and management with gender consideration • There are significant differences in HRD needs for employees with different genders, ages, working years, educational levels, majors, and growing regions Research and survey (2) Research-industry collaboration and gender, researchers There are seven major topic categories varying from personal mental health and team building to organization and gender aspects. Although Asian cultures and gender aspects are expected to be related to each other, only few research and practices (i.e., gender segregation in classrooms) seem to be directly related to cultural background.
RQ3. What are the possible research directions? • Identifying what is specific to each region and/or culture and what can be commonly applied • To compare with other areas outside Asia • To include domestic papers since regional issues may appear in domestic papers • Clarifying relationships among topics should be another research direction • Resulting in a solid foundation for accelerating further research and getting actionable practices • Clarifying relationships among various diversity factors • Personality types, cultural diversity, and age 10 Team building SE education SE major and job OSS and community Mental health Organization Research and survey
Conclusion and future work • Through a systematic literature review, we report on some trends in research and practice on gender aspects in software development and engineering reported by authors in Asia. • We plan to expand the search query and conduct additional reviews in the future. Comparison with other regions outside Asia and investigation of the synergy between gender aspects and cultural concerns are also our future work. 11 Team building SE education SE major and job OSS and community Mental health Organization Research and survey
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