ABSTRACT
The number of women in computing in Brazil is still below the desired, both in higher education and in the labor force. One of the possible approaches to understanding this phenomenon is to conduct qualitative research with female adolescents while they are still forming their beliefs about career and courses paths to follow. This paper aims to understand how the female students of the professional high school in Informatics perceive the area of computer science in terms of basic beliefs about the area and the people who work in it. By investing in researches with this kind of students could help us to understand their perceptions about the computing area, in order to contribute in the research on Women in Computing in Brazil, because these students have already made a first choice for Computer Science as a field of study. This paper presents a qualitative analysis of the perceptions of 60 female students about their beliefs of the area of Computing. We conclude that, although the students are inserted in a professional course in Informatics, they have a limited view on Computing as an acting field.