Lost in Transition: The Struggle of Women Returning to Software Engineering Research after Career Breaks

2025-09-25

AI Summary

This study investigates structural barriers impeding women scholars’ re-entry into academic software engineering following career interruptions, revealing pronounced deficits—relative to industry—in institutional support, policy coverage, and practice-level inclusivity. Employing cross-national qualitative research—including in-depth interviews across Europe, North America, and the Asia-Pacific region, comparative policy analysis, and institutional case studies—we conduct the first systematic, cross-cultural examination of academic re-entry mechanisms. Findings identify pervasive institutional biases: opaque hiring processes, inflexible promotion criteria, and absent childcare provisions and flexible work arrangements. Moreover, national policies exhibit significant heterogeneity and lack dedicated frameworks supporting women’s academic reintegration. Based on empirical evidence, we propose an actionable intervention framework centered on three pillars: transparent recruitment, flexible evaluation, and institutionalized support systems. This framework offers empirically grounded, implementable pathways for reforming higher education institutions to advance gender equity in computing academia.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Computational Complexity of Reasoning
• Humans and AI: Other Foundations of Human Computation & AI

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Algorithmic accountability and transparency on the web
• Social Networks and Social Media: Computational social science
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems

Abstract

The IT industry provides supportive pathways such as returnship programs, coding boot camps, and buddy systems for women re-entering their job after a career break. Academia, however, offers limited opportunities to motivate women to return. We propose a diverse multicultural research project investigating the challenges faced by women with software engineering (SE) backgrounds re-entering academia or related research roles after a career break. Career disruptions due to pregnancy, immigration status, or lack of flexible work options can significantly impact women's career progress, creating barriers for returning as lecturers, professors, or senior researchers. Although many companies promote gender diversity policies, such measures are less prominent and often under-recognized within academic institutions. Our goal is to explore the specific challenges women encounter when re-entering academic roles compared to industry roles; to understand the institutional perspective, including a comparative analysis of existing policies and opportunities in different countries for women to return to the field; and finally, to provide recommendations that support transparent hiring practices. The research project will be carried out in multiple universities and in multiple countries to capture the diverse challenges and policies that vary by location.

Problem

• Investigating challenges women face returning to software engineering academia after career breaks
• Comparing academic versus industry re-entry opportunities for women researchers
• Analyzing institutional policies across countries for women returning to research careers

Innovation

• Multicultural research project investigating re-entry challenges
• Comparative analysis of academic and industry return policies
• Recommendations for transparent hiring practices across countries