Abstract

Studies like (Camp, 1997), (Gurer & Camp, 2002), (Sigurdardóttir, 2000), and (Vegso, 2005) have documented the declining percentage of women in computer science (CS) in the U.S. and other countries. While women are under-represented in the U.S. overall, there are cultural pockets within the U.S. that are exceptions to the rule. For example, (Lopez & Shultze, 2002) note that African-American women earned the majority of CS bachelors degrees each year from 1989 through 1997 at U.S. historically black colleges and universities. (Fisher & Margolis, 2002) and (Frieze & Blum, 2002) report some success in increasing the percentage of women studying computing at Carnegie-Mellon. (Camp, et al., 2001) points out that the problem is significantly worse for CS departments housed in a school of engineering compared to those housed in a school of arts and sciences – a phenomenon dubbed “the school of engineering effect.” So while women are on average under-represented in CS in the U.S., such national averages can hide significant variance within a country’s subcultures. Outside the U.S., (Schinzel, 1999) notes that the situation in “Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, and German-speaking countries” (ASGs) is similar to that in the U.S., but female representation in CS is comparatively constant and high (45-50%) in Greece, Turkey, and the “Romanic” countries (e.g., France, Italy). Schinzel’s data is fragmentary, but it offers intriguing hints that culture plays an important role in encouraging or discouraging women from studying CS. These and reports like (Galpin, 2002) indicate that there are non-ASG countries where women are equally represented in CS. This in turn suggests that the problem is one of culture: ASG cultures apparently in some way discourage women from choosing IT-related careers, while the cultures of these other countries apparently encourage women to do so. If the root of the problem is the culture in the ASG countries, then that is where we should focus our efforts. What is it about the culture of the U.S. and other ASG countries that discourages women from studying CS? Trying to analyze the negative cultural factors from within an ASG country is rather like a fish trying to analyze the water in which it is swimming. A preferable approach is to become a “fish out of water” and visit a non-ASG country where women are studying CS. By identifying those cultural differences in non-ASG countries that are leading women to study CS, we can identify those aspects of ASG culture that are problematic. In this article, we examine the country of Mauritius, a 25x40 mile island roughly 500 miles east of Madagascar that is home to 1.2 million people. Ethnically, its population is 68% Indo-Mauritian, 27% Creole-African, 3% SinoMauritian, and 2% Franco-Mauritian. Religiously, its people are 52% Hindu, 28% Christian, 17% Muslim, and 3% other. With this dynamic mix of people, Mauritius is one of the world’s most culturally diverse countries.