Leaky Pipeline

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The pessimistic scenario for ‘women in information communications technology’ and for ‘women in technology’ generally is even more paradoxical and insidious with respect to ‘women in computing’. Studies within this field not only report insignificant improvement in the proportion of women in Western countries’ computing fields but also alert us of a declining trend. Moreover, that decline has been accompanied – or even preceded – by years of research and programs that have specifically focused on increasing women’s participation in computing; however, they have not had the expected effect. More surprisingly, there has been a significant increase in the representation of women in all other science-related fields and professions. Our aim is to provide some clues to fight the feeling of inexorability that may be entailed by the research on women in computing. We will argue that part of the problem is related to the static nature of the research deployed around the problem of ‘women in computing’, primarily, the research constructed around the ‘leaky pipeline’ metaphor. We provide a synthesis of the critiques this research has received in recent decades and highlight research trends that render other landscapes visible when studying ‘women in computing’. These trends help us question how we are conducting research within this field and urge us to problematise assumptions about computing and gender that we may paradoxically continue to reproduce even while denouncing the paucity of women in computing and studying the reasons for this state of affairs. In short, we present the need for different researchers’ eyes that allow different landscapes of women and computing to be seen and produced.

Women are underrepresented among political science faculty and leave academic careers at far greater rates than their male colleagues. Women's lower research productivity is one reason for the declining number of women at advanced academic ranks. Mentoring can provide necessary advice and feedback to encourage scholarly production, but research shows that female scholars face challenges in traditional mentoring arrangements. We propose that peer mentoring can provide a missing link by supporting research productivity. Using a case study of an existing peer-mentoring group, we document how writing groups can provide flexible mechanisms for peer mentoring that circumvent the obstacles women face with mentoring and complement existing mentoring relationships. We discuss the structure of this group, as well as a survey-based assessment of it, to demonstrate how this approach can be readily adopted by other women in the profession seeking to expand their network of mentors to include peers in their subfield.

Women’s proportion in tertiary education is still lower than that of man in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Moreover, women are underrepresented in top positions in STEM fields in academia. This phenomenon can be described by the ’leaky pipeline’ metaphor (Berryman 1983): women ‘leak out’ from the pipeline during their career to a greater extent than their male counterparts. Several institutional and individual constraints have been identified as reasons behind this phenomenon. In the first part of this paper we will introduce the leaky pipeline metaphor briefly, then we will show the main explanations for the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields in the educational system. Special attention will be given to the discourses of the masculin worldview of science, to the academic performance of women, to women’s attitudes toward science, and to the presence and the effects of the hidden curriculum. In the conclusion we will discuss some good practices and their critiques as well.