Investigating the dynamics of women admission to Information Technology degrees in Russian Universities

Women remain strikingly under underrepresented in jobs related to engineering and technology; besides, in the US and Europe during several past years the shares of women in technology degrees have generally been showing either decline, or stagnation, or negligible growth. The reluctance of women to pursue engineering and technology degrees finds a variety of explanations, from the lack of interest to the unwillingness to study in a male-dominated culture. Some countries set specific measures to attain women to pursue degrees in engineering and technology and monitor women's admission to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) degrees at the universities. Others, like Russia, focus mostly on the overall student population admitted to ICT degrees but do not monitor student population gender-wise. The aim of this research effort was to collect and analyze the data on women's admission in undergraduate ICT programs in Russia. The contribution of this study is that no data on women's enrollment to ICT degrees in Russia has been publicly available before. Nine universities in Russia provided these data on women's enrollment in ICT degree programs for several past years, mostly from 2011 to 2021. In 2021, cumulative intake in ICT degree programs of these universities was about 10k students, which constitutes about 1/3 of the total student body in such programs in Russia. Based on the analysis and comparison of the data for Russia with similar data for other countries in Europe, USA and Asia, the overall trend of women admission to ICT majors in Russia is currently aligned with the US and Europe trends. We have observed some fluctuations depending on the geographical location of the universities.