Strategies to help Computer Science students develop sensitivity towards the Gender Gap

This work presents some strategies implemented as part of the official syllabus of an Ethics, Legislation and Profession course for Computer Science students at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, designed to deal with gender issues. This paper presents the goals included in the gender gap concept, which extend the traditional gender gap as in numerical gap to other more general gender gap issues such as stereotypes and their impact, consequences of women not participating in the development of ICT etc. The methodology followed to tackle the issue is also presented, combining different activities and class assignments. References and some detailed explanations to the materials or how to use them is also presented. Results from students' choices, comments and short essays are presented. They show that male students in this field are initially unaware of the gender gap problem, but that the strategies presented here help to awaken an interest towards the topic, that is expressed in a willingness to take action.