Unconscious Bias and Perceived Discrimination by Tech Professionals in Brazil

  • Theo Canuto PUC-Rio
  • Júlia Azevedo PUC-Rio
  • Jessica Ribas PUC-Rio
  • Anderson Uchôa UFC
  • Larissa Rocha UNEB
  • Juliana Alves Pereira PUC-Rio

Resumo


Diversity and inclusion are essential drivers of innovation in software engineering, yet systemic inequalities and implicit bias persist as key challenges. By surveying 220 Brazilian tech professionals, this study aims to explore how inclusion and discrimination are perceived in the workplace. Findings reveal that 95.2% of women report experiencing sexism; 77.1% of non-white professionals identify racism as a key issue; 61.5% of disabled professionals report experiencing ableism. Despite widespread acknowledgment of discrimination, only 23% of respondents explicitly recognized the presence of unconscious bias in themselves. These results reveal persistent equity gaps and call for DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) strategies in Brazil’s tech sector.

Referências

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Canuto, T., Azevedo, J., Ribas, J., Uchôa, A., Rocha, L., and Alves Pereira, J. (2024). Complementary material. [link]. Accessed: 2025-07-31.

Canuto, T., Azevedo, J., Ribas, J., Uchôa, A., Rocha, L., and Alves Pereira, J. (2025). Diversity matters: Perceived inclusion and discrimination by brazilian tech professionals. In Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering (SBES), pages 1–11. SBC.

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Punter, T., Ciolkowski, M., Freimut, B., and John, I. (2003). Conducting on-line surveys in software engineering. In International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering (ISESE), pages 80–88. IEEE.
Publicado
22/09/2025
CANUTO, Theo; AZEVEDO, Júlia; RIBAS, Jessica; UCHÔA, Anderson; ROCHA, Larissa; PEREIRA, Juliana Alves. Unconscious Bias and Perceived Discrimination by Tech Professionals in Brazil. In: CONCURSO DE TRABALHOS DE INICIAÇÃO CIENTÍFICA EM ENGENHARIA DE SOFTWARE - CONGRESSO BRASILEIRO DE SOFTWARE: TEORIA E PRÁTICA (CBSOFT), 16. , 2025, Recife/PE. Anais [...]. Porto Alegre: Sociedade Brasileira de Computação, 2025 . p. 54-55. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/cbsoft_estendido.2025.14143.