Relationship between Gender and Code Reading Speed in Software Development

TL;DR

This study investigates whether gender influences code reading speed in software development, finding no significant difference between males and females even with memory-intensive programs.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence that gender does not affect code reading speed, challenging stereotypes and supporting gender equality in IT workforce development.

Findings

No significant gender difference in code reading speed.

Memory requirements do not impact gender-based performance.

Supports gender-neutral approaches in software development training.

Abstract

Recently, workforce shortage has become a popular issue in information technology (IT). One solution to increasing the workforce supply is to increase the number of female IT professionals. This is because there is gender imbalance in information technology area. To accomplish this, it is important to suppress the influence of biases, such as the belief that men are more suited for careers in science and technology than women, and to increase the choice of careers available to female professionals. To help suppress the influence of gender bias, we analyzed the relationship between gender and code reading speed in the field of software development. Certain source codes require developers to use substantial memory to properly understand them, such as those with many variables that frequently change values. Several studies have indicated that the performance of memory differs in males and females. To test the veracity of this claim, we analyzed the influence of gender on code-reading speed through an experiment. Pursuant to this, we prepared four programs that required varied amounts of memory to properly understand them. Then, we measured the time required by each of the 17 male and 16 female subjects (33 subjects in total) to comprehend the different programs. The results suggest that there is no explicit difference between male and female subjects in this regard, even in the case of programs that require high memory capacities for proper understanding.