Gender Gaps in Cybersecurity Engagement and Self-Efficacy Growth Trajectories

Dec 02, 2015

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Abstract

Females are significantly less likely to pursue tech-focused careers, and have significantly lower self-efficacy in technical domains. Despite initiatives to increase female participation in STEM majors, the percentage of females pursuing college degrees in computer and information science actually decreased between 2004 and 2012 in the United States. Towards the ultimate goal of increasing female representation in the cyber workforce, it is important to spark and nurture females' engagement and self-efficacy during formative years in middle and high school. As a first step, we need to define and measure cybersecurity engagement and self-efficacy. In this talk, I will discuss my work in the area of cybersecurity engagement and self-efficacy measurement by introducing the Cybersecurity Engagement and Self-Efficacy Scale. I present results from a pilot study of 34 participants (ages 13 – 17) that tracked growth in cybersecurity engagement and self-efficacy across three time points. Overall, females initially demonstrated significantly lower cybersecurity engagement and self-efficacy relative to males. However, over the course of five days of hands-on learning and simulated cyber-attack, female participants demonstrated significantly greater growth over time and the gender-based gaps in cybersecurity engagement and self-efficacy disappeared. This suggests that informal, activity-based learning experiences are crucial for reducing gender-based gaps in cyber-related domains and may serve as a starting point for promoting female participation, pursuit, and persistence in applied cybersecurity.