Interdisciplinary research dispels gender stereotype that men programmers contribute more open-source software

An interdisciplinary study at The College of Wooster dispelled the stereotype that computer programmers who are men contribute more open-source software files than women. The research led by Heather Guarnera, assistant professor of computer science, and computer science and psychology major Leilani Torres ’25, was peer-reviewed and presented by Torres at the recent Association for Computing Machinery’s 56th Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Amber Garcia, professor of psychology at Wooster, was a contributing author, and Michael Collard, associate professor of computer science at the University of Akron, also collaborated on the research.

“Strong gender stereotypes that exist in the U.S. around computer science send messages, often starting in junior high, that computer science is for boys and that girls should not pursue computer science,” said Garcia, whose research includes gender stereotypes and prejudice. “What this research shows is that stereotypes about large gender differences across all aspects of computer science may not be true, and this finding is important for changing stereotypes.”

Garcia and Guarnera first found the interdisciplinary connection while they worked in Lilly House during their concurrent research leaves and collaborated to complete the study. Researching the top 15 programming languages as identified by the 2024 StackOverflow Developer survey, Guarnera, Torres, Collard, and Garcia, evaluated a dataset of 100,000 open-source software developers, that was half men and half women. Looking at developer behavior in software ecosystems, they used an accurate and free name-to-gender inference tool to determine the gender of the developers and focused on comparing women’s to men’s contributions. “With equal representation, we found minimal differences between how many files either gender edited,” Guarnera said.

According to Guarnera, women represent about 20% of people who earn bachelor’s degrees in computer science and less than 10% of the developers who participate in open-source software development. The disparity leads to biased technology advancements tailored for a male demographic. Previous studies have repeatedly shown that gender diversity within software development teams yields positive outcomes, including greater team productivity and the speed at which issues are fixed, Guarnera said.

Torres, who was a co-author on the study and presented the two-hour poster session at the conference, was essential to the research process. She worked as a sophomore research assistant in summer 2024 and then helped train Hiruy Worku ’27, also a computer science major, as the fall sophomore researcher. In addition to performing much of the data analysis, Torres generated ideas within the research group and provided feedback based on her background and experience in her computer science and psychology majors and data science minor.

“Being the first author is such an exciting accomplishment in my academic career,” Torres said. During the research process, she took the initiative to create PowerPoint presentations to organize and present data more efficiently and learned how to communicate creatively within a team setting. She enjoyed discussing the research and answering questions during the conference presentation

“Dr. Guarnera has facilitated my academic and professional confidence, and I am inspired to conduct more research in this field,” she said. Torres is also co-author on another paper that is being revised for journal submission. The paper is an extension of the gender stereotype research she presented.

Many women at the conference stopped by to acknowledge the barriers they encountered to contributing to open-source software, which led to many discussions and new ideas for future work, “which is the best possible outcome,” Guarnera said. Because the initial study used a tool that did not include other gender identities or consider a username that did not reflect their gender, in future research they plan to have participants self-report their gender identity and include additional measures, Garcia said. “We hope this research can inform future research about current gender differences in programming languages and spark new research on identifying factors to explain those differences.”

Guarnera and Torres presented their research at the recent Association for Computing Machinery’s 56th Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Photos provided by Guarnera.

Posted in Homepage Featured, News on April 4, 2025.