Women of Color Leveraging Community Cultural Wealth to Persist in Computing and Tech Graduate Education: A Qualitative Meta-Synthesis

Abstract

This paper synthesizes 20 years (1999–2019) of empirical research on women of color (WOC) in computing and tech graduate education. Using complementary theoretical frameworks of social pain and community cultural wealth (CCW), we identify factors in the research literature that affect WOC’s experiences, participation, success, and persistence. This qualitative meta-synthesis employed systematic literature search and selection methods, a hybrid approach to coding and thematic analysis. Findings include the ways in which social pain from isolation, exclusion, and hostility from peers and faculty negatively affected WOC’s experiences in their graduate programs. Often, WOC’s motivation to persist and succeed in computing came from key social actors, such as mentors and families, and from individual and social strategies, such as seeking counterspaces, that leveraged their CCW. This meta-synthesis contributes to the knowledge base about the mechanisms that support and hinder the persistence of WOC in computing graduate programs and provides recommendations for institutions and for further research.

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