Three Icpc Finalists and the Tech Gender Gap

Only about a dozen women competed on the 133 three-person teams at the 41st annual ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals 2017 held in Rapid City, SD, in May. The small percentage of females participating is not limited to competitive programming, but is representative of most aspects of computer science.

This was not always the case. In the 1980s, 30% to 40%  of U.S. computer science graduates were women. This number began a downward trend in the 1990s, and today about 20% of U.S. computer science graduates are women.

Rakina Zata Amni from Sumatra, Indonesia, is only 19 years old, but already has secured a full-time software engineering position at Google when she graduates in August. Amni, who is studying Java (the Indonesian island, not the programming language), is in her final year at Universitas Indonesia, and is happy she got the opportunity to compete in the ICPC World Finals.

Amni started programming at 13, when she joined the computer club at her school. "I had no idea what it will be about, but I thought to myself that I spend all of my time on the computer anyways, so why not do something useful while I'm in front of it," she recalled. "The first session of the club, we started learning the basics of programming; I instantly thought that it is the coolest thing ever. After a few sessions, we learned about algorithms and did competitive programming problems. It was really fun. With every new algorithm that I learned, I felt my whole worldview change. It didn't take long before I knew I'd pursue computer science."

She feels more younger girls don't pursue computer science because of the stigma of being labeled a recluse and a nerd, as well as the strong male-dominated culture associated with computing.

Amni considers one's own negative thoughts one of the greatest problems women face in computer science. "With every internship I got, I almost constantly thought about how I don't deserve it and maybe I was just there because I'm a girl," she said. "But after a while, I got to know about impostor syndrome and how it exactly matched me. Then I started seeing things differently. My coworkers treated me just like everybody else. I was even delegated extra tasks because my main task was going so well. I got complimented on my work and I socialize pretty well with my coworkers. My bad thoughts were just my mind pulling tricks."

The teenager encourages women to identify these thoughts, read about how to deal with imposter syndrome (when one cannot own one's own achievements and fears being exposed as a 'fraud'), and support other women. It is comforting to be able to talk with someone who is experiencing the same things, she said.

At age 21, Simran Dokania, from Mumbai, India,  has one year left on an integrated master's degree program (allowing her to hearn a bachelor degree at the same time as a master's degree) at the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore. She started programming in her second year of college, but has found the learning easy, thanks to mathematics courses she had already taken. "The beauty of mathematics has always fascinated me and it has always been my favorite subject since childhood," Dokania said. "Competitive programming is very closely related to mathematics in terms of the problem-solving process. The exhilaration of solving a programming challenge mathematically attracts me to it."

Dokania, who was at ICPC for the first time this year, encourages girls to take computer science as an elective so they get exposure at an early age, and stresses the importance of parents introducing their daughters to STEM fields.

Regarding the field's gender gap, Dokania said the root of the problem lies "in the culture where engineering is perceived to be a man's job and women are considered incompetent compared to men in subjects like math. I am fortunate to have parents that always encourage me to pursue what I love."

Dokania said she has had only positive experiences in computer science, and thinks it is important to encourage young girls in the sciences. "We girls sometimes assume that we cannot be as good as boys in programming or computer science, and therefore never give it a shot," she said. "We should stop comparing ourselves to others and follow our dreams. The ultimate goal is to become a better person than yesterday."

Rubmary Rojas, 22, competed at ICPC on the team from Universidad Simón Bolívar in Venezuela. She also competed in the 2016 ICPC World Finals in Thailand, so she had an idea of what to expect.

Rojas enjoys problem-solving, and began competitive programming in college after being introduced to it by a math teacher. She didn't know a single thing about computer science in high school, she said.

While most of her professional and academic experiences have been positive, Rojas said there have been instances where she felt discriminated against because of her gender. In one case, she was interested in a computer science job posted on her college's job board. She met every job requirement except for one that made her heart sink: "Sexo Masculino." Women were not even allowed to apply.

At the recent World Finals, some male contestants were taken aback to see a female contestant, Rojas said. "A couple of boys got surprised when they realized I was a female contestant and it made me feel a little bit upset," Rojas said. "One of them asked me 'Are you a contestant? A girl?' in an exaggerated way. The other guy started to bother me with questions like 'Do you know binary search?' and other topics. Most of them were really basic concepts. As if a woman couldn't learn the same algorithms than a man can learn. . . . Both of them later apologized to me."

"I think there is such a wide gender gap because in society there is a stereotype which relates men with computer science, engineering, mathematics, and other sciences. People think that a female programmer is weird, and this feeling is transmitted through media."

Kelsey Sinclair is a tech writer from Rapid City, SD.