Professorship: not for female computer scientists. Exploring gender equality in an academic workplace

Taria Tiainen focuses the gender bias in one university and its computer science staff.

The Centre for International Research on Care, Labour and Equalities (CIRCLE) presents:

Professorship: not for female computer scientists. Exploring gender equality in an academic workplace.

Abstract

Finland is a country which highlights equality, especially in education. This has lead to situation that over half of university students are female. Computer science is one of the exceptions; just 25-30 % of students are female, also the portion of female doctoral students is the same. In Finland, the professors of computer science are mostly male; only 7 % of them are female.

I focus the gender bias in one university and its computer science staff. The top of academic career for female PhDs is becoming a lecturer. The female lecturers teach a lot and also publish higher numbers than male lecturers. This presentation opens discussion of explanations for gender bias. One of them is gendered images of science and technology; another is gendered practices in promoting people.

Speaker: Taria Tiainen (University of Tampere, Finland)

My back ground is in information systems and computer sciences. Besides of SIS I’ve worked also in WRC (Work Research Centre) at 1997-2002. There I worked with sociologists who focused on gender perspective at work places. I’ve studied information system professionalism from gender perspective, e-Business from consumer perspective (e.g. e-Trust), and the use of virtual environment into product design.

I teach principles on information systems development (for 1. year students) and qualitative research methods (for 4. year students). Furthermore, I supervise BSc, MSc, and doctoral dissertations. I am a board member of our school. Now we are redeveloping the study programs.

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