In many European countries male graduates tend to outnumber women graduates in science, mathematics and computing programmes. According to [1, p.16] the average percentage of women graduates in science, and computing in the EU is 35.7 per cent showing a downward trend even as more females than ever before have access to education and even as more and more women in the EU enrol at university.

Many technically oriented degree programs at universities in the EU and here especially in German-speaking countries such as Germany and Austria have had and have problems to motivate females to take up technical studies.

This paper looks into some of the reasons why females seem to be reluctant to study computer science (such as upbringing and socialization) and takes a close look at the evaluation of projects and measures at the degree program Information Management that increased its enrolment of female students from 13% in the winter semester 2003 to 33% in the winter semester 2007. The authors want to show to what extent the research and results in the US [e.g.2] can be applied to Austria and other German-speaking countries.

After looking into the reasons that prevent women from taking up technical studies [3], the project TouchIT that was conducted at the degree program information management is described briefly.

Within this project changes in the curriculum, the program’s advertising strategy [4], but also in the didactic approaches were made to meet the needs of female students in the field of technology. Great emphasis was laid on finding out design preferences of females as far as user interfaces are concerned [5]. These preferences will also be described shortly in this paper along with different expectations towards computing of girls and women according to Margolis/Fisher [2] again with a focus the US requirements compared to the results of our evaluations.

This paper describes trends from our evaluations and points out how these trends can be interpreted to lower the drop-out rate in technical subjects such as programming.

The conclusion of this paper will be that the leaky pipeline can only be patched if content is taught and presented in a way that is appealing and motivating to both sexes.

Keywords: Gender, computer science, drop-out rate, motivation

Selected references:
[1] Huyer, Sophia/ Westholm, Gunnar: Gender Indicators in Science, Engineering and Technology, UNESCO Publishing, France 2007 (p. 16)
[2] Margolis, Jane/Fisher, Allan: Unlocking the Clubhouse / Women in Computing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The MIT Press, Cambridge 2002
[3] Collmer, Sabine: Frauen und Männer am Computer, Aspekte geschlechtsspezifischer Technikaneignung, Wiesbaden: Dt. Univ.-Verl. 1997
[4] Ritter, Martina: Bits und Bytes vom Apfel der Erkenntnis. Frauen-Technik-Männer, Münster Westfälisches Dampfboot 1999
[5] Preece, Jennifer/Rogers, Yvonne/Sharp, Helen: Interaction design beyond human-computer interaction, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2002