Actions for Gender Balance in Informatics Across Europe

This book is a open access. The primary purpose of this book is to serve as a comprehensive guide, translating research into best practices to promote gender inclusivity in informatics. The handbook seeks to empower its readers, providing them with actionable recommendations to bridge the gender gap in informatics. This initiative aims to have an immediate impact on the informatics community, raising awareness and interest through its practical resources, and on the society bringing more women into computer science and technological studies and following career steps. This book provides you with five years of research on gender equity and improving the gender balance in Informatics across Europe. It translates current research on gender inclusivity into practical strategies and intervention methods. It offers recommendations for the recruitment, retention, and promotion of female computer scientists at different academic and industrial levels, and insights into fostering mutually beneficial cooperation between universities and industries.

We have collected data from different target audiences and different education and career levels to provide insights into why we have low girl and women participation rates in sciences, why we have a leaky pipeline in academia, and why women leave the industry.

We have analyzed this data and identified four target audiences for activities and policy influence. We provide sets of recommendations for each of these target groups on how to become active in advocacy as well as specific actions in their daily environments to improve learning and work environments as well as retention of women students and personnel.

We provide ample scenarios of how to apply our findings in practice and share materials both in the book as well as in free public access online documentation to further disseminate and make use of this knowledge.

The book serves as joint European voice of Informatics to increase the equity for women in the field.

Birgit Penzenstadler is an Associate Professor at the joint Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology and Gothenburg University, Sweden, as well as an Adjunct Professor at the Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland. She holds a PhD in Software Engineering from the Technical University of Munich, Germany. Furthermore, she is a 500-RYT yoga teacher with special certification in breathwork, an Embodied Mindfulness Coach, Reiki level II practitioner, and NET (narrative exposure therapy) facilitator, and permaculture designer. She has been investigating well-being, resilience, and sustainability from a point of view of software engineering during the past ten years, working on a body of knowledge and concepts of how to support sustainability from within RE. Part of these efforts are documented with the Karlskrona Alliance that published a body of work including the Karlskrona Manifesto.
Birgit teaches yoga and Acro in Göteborg, Sweden, and guides meditation and breathwork on Insight Timer.She gave a TEDx talk in 2022 in Göteborg about how wellbeing, resilience and sustainability are connected and how to consider them when designing technology.
Karima Boudaoud is Associate Professor at Université Côte d’Azur. Her main research focuses on Human-centric cybersecurity and privacy, putting the Human in the heart of Cybersecurity and privacy challenges and issues and considering multidisciplinarity as a key to resolve these challenges. She has participated in EU, Swiss & French security research projects. As a teacher, she coordinates the Cybersecurity & Privacy curricula at Ecole Polytechn’Nice Sophia and the International Relations at R&T department of IUT Nice Côte d’Azur. She is also involved in gender balance activities for more than 10 years and an active member of Femmes & Sciences Association since 2013 and a member of  the European Platform of Women Scientist. At the European level, she was also a highly active member of the Cost Action CA19122 EUGAIN (European Network For Gender Balance in Informatics) as  the leader of WG4 (Cooperation with Industry and Society), co-leader of WG5 (Strategy and Dissemination, where she was responsible of the Strategy part), co-chair of the Minerva Award Committee in 2022 and co-chair of the EUGAIN’2021 and EUGAIN’2022 workshops part of the ECSS (European Computer Science Summit) conference. Moreover, considering the Humanity at the heart of her activities, she is also a life and self-development coach, where she uses her expertise within a specific course to help students find professional fulfillment.

Antinisca di Marco is Associate Professor in Computer Science at University of L’Aquila. She got her PhD in Computer Science and Application in 2002 at the University of L’Aquila. Her main research topics are Software Quality Engineering, Data Science, Quality in Learning Systems, and Bioinformatics. She is involved in several national and international projects on such topics. She is responsible for the research infrastructure of the Territori Aperti project, co-PI of the SoBigData.it project and SoBigData European Research Infrastructure, and she is the director of the INFOLIFE CINI Laboratory node in L’Aquila. Since 2018, she has been involved in several actions and projects to improve equal opportunities in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). In particular, she is a member of the Cost Action CA19122 EUGAIN (European Network For Gender Balance in Informatics) and co-creator and co-coordinator of PinKamP.

Sonay Caner-Yıldırım is an academic at Erzincan Binali Yıldırım University, Türkiye, specializing in Computer Education and Instructional Technology. Holding a PhD from Middle East Technical University, her multidisciplinary expertise encompasses computer science, education, and psychology, with a strong emphasis on the human factors in computing. Dr. Caner-Yıldırım has led and participated in numerous national and international projects addressing the social and psychological dimensions of computer science, including COST Actions focused on gender equity in informatics, participatory approaches with older adults, and enhancing cybersecurity through human-centered design. Her active involvement in the European Network for Gender Balance in Informatics (CA19122 EUGAIN) underscores her commitment to promoting inclusivity and gender equity within STEM fields. Additionally, Dr. Caner-Yıldırım volunteers in initiatives focused on academic well-being and provided psychosocial support following February 6, 2023 earthquakes in Türkiye. In these roles, she aims to develop and improve technology-driven interventions to support mental health recovery and enhance the well-being of academic communities.