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Abstract
Women are underrepresented in the field of computer science in the United States.
However, this is not a new problem as female participation in computer science has been experiencing a steady decline over the last three decades. Current reporting on women’s participation in this field has been published as steadying at around 18 percent. Meanwhile, there are varying levels of participation in other countries, particularly in Muslim majority countries. For example, women in Bahrain, Morocco, Palestine, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Tunisia earned more than half of the total number of science degrees in their respective nations. This stark contrast between the United States and these other countries has prompted an exploration into the factors that contribute to women’s participation in computer science.
This thesis focuses on understanding how cultural environment can affect the
participation of women in computer science, specifically with respect to individual,
household, community, country, and global influences on occupational pursuit. The
guiding theoretical framework is multi-level (micro and macro) cultural theory, to
answer the following research questions: 1) How do micro and macro level cultural
influences impact Muslim identified women’s intention to pursue a computer science undergraduate degree? 2) How do experiences differ in their impact on pursuing a computer science degree for Muslim women as compared to non-Muslim women in the United States? To answer these questions, I employed a sequential exploratory mixed methods design that leveraged interviews, a survey, qualitative analysis, as well as statistical analysis. The results of this work are important to shedding light on the ways to increase engagement of women in computer science in the United States.