A report on strategies for motivating and developing the computational thinking for and by women

INTRODUCTION : Initiatives to engage girls and women in STEM-related areas have been successfully reported in the literature. However, such initiatives should involve the participation of the local community and address their needs and interests. OBJECTIVE : This article reports a project that aims to apply different strategies to motivate and teach computational thinking for women, led by students of Science and Technology at UFABC. METHOD : The methodology proposes three working branches: research (understanding the factors that discourage girls from the Computer Science course), outreach actions and teaching programming logic for women. RESULTS : Preliminary research revealed a female participation of less than 18% in all subjects of the course and a percentage lower than 15% of female graduates. The teaching actions had a total of 61 graduates. The events held (workshop and seminar) had about 80 participants. CONCLUSION : The actions of research, teaching, extension and dissemination of this project managed to engage more than 200 women and contemplate the interests of the internal and external community to UFABC. As future work, the initiatives will be extended to high schools in the region. The methodology should be consolidated and applied at the institutional level to include other STEM courses at UFABC.