Saltar al contenido principal

Escribe una PREreview

Increasing Female Participation in Cybersecurity Pathways: A Systematic Review of School Outreach Initiatives

Publicada
Servidor
Preprints.org
DOI
10.20944/preprints202609.1689.v1

Background and context: Women remain underrepresented in cybersecurity despite growing global demand for skilled professionals. Outreach is widely used to build awareness, confidence, and interest in cybersecurity pathways, yet evidence about effective program design, inclusivity, sustainability, and longer-term impact remains fragmented. Objective: This systematic literature review (SLR) examines cybersecurity outreach initiatives, with a primary focus on interventions intended to increase participation among female high school students. Method: Guided by the PRISMA framework, the review synthesised literature published between 2014 and 2024. The primary focus was female high school students; because cybersecurity-specific evidence for this population was limited, gender-neutral cybersecurity and broader school-based STEM outreach were also included where findings offered transferable design insights. In total, 80 sources were included: 74 studies and 6 reports. Findings: Workshops and camps were the dominant delivery formats, while cybersecurity-specific programs remained comparatively limited and were largely technical in focus. Only seven cybersecurity outreach programs explicitly targeted female students. Longitudinal or semi-longitudinal evaluation was uncommon, and reporting on sustainability, gender-disaggregated outcomes, and post-program continuation was limited. The review synthesises these findings into a taxonomy of outreach program design characteristics. Implications: The findings provide an evidence-informed basis for designing more accessible, gender-responsive, sustainable, and evaluable cybersecurity outreach, and offers actionable recommendations for researchers, educators, and policymakers in tertiary education seeking to design outreach that creates inclusive pathways for female students into cybersecurity.

Puedes escribir una PREreview de Increasing Female Participation in Cybersecurity Pathways: A Systematic Review of School Outreach Initiatives. Una PREreview es una revisión de un preprint y puede variar desde unas pocas oraciones hasta un extenso informe, similar a un informe de revisión por pares organizado por una revista.

Antes de comenzar

We will ask you to log in with your ORCID iD. If you don’t have an iD, you can create one.

What is an ORCID iD?

An ORCID iD is a unique identifier that distinguishes you from everyone with the same or similar name.

Comenzar ahora