Representation of women in HPC conferences

Abstract

Women are acutely underrepresented in the HPC workforce. Addressing this gap requires accurate metrics on the representation of women and its associated factors. The goal of this paper is to provide current, broad, and reproducible data on this gender gap. Specifically, this study provides in-depth statistics on women s representation in HPC conferences, especially for authors of peer-reviewed papers, who serve as the keystone for future advances in the field. To this end, we analyzed participant data from nine HPC and HPC-related peer-reviewed conferences. In addition to gender distributions, we looked at post-publication citation statistics of the papers and authors research experience, country, and work sector. Our main finding is that women represent only 10% of all HPC authors, with large geographical variations and small variations by sector. Representation is particularly low at higher experience levels. This 10% ratio is lower than even the 20 30% ratio in all computer science.