Pros and Cons of Running Educational Hackathons in a Gender-Neutral Fashion

Our work builds knowledge on gender-neutral hackathons in educational context. Hackathon itself is an intensive project-based event, requiring participants to make results in a short timeframe, which stimulates creative thinking, knowledge sharing, and overall learning. This has made hackathons popular in an educational context. As a hackathon event often implies software design, the introduction of hackathon practices would be especially beneficial for Software Engineering education. The question is how to attract a diverse student audience to enroll in these hackathon events and hackathon enhanced courses. Historically, hackathons attract fewer females than males and show gender balance issues. Even though there are positive examples of female-inclusive events, there is a risk that by focusing on women’s interests, the hackathon designers could end up discouraging the male audience. It was found that men e.g., tend to reject feminine products and occupations as they experience social pressure regarding what is acceptable for them. Thus, it would be reasonable to focus on the hackathon’s gender-neutrality rather than on female inclusivity. This research provides practices to implement hackathon courses gender-neutrally. We also discuss pros and cons of different approaches.