Issue in Focus - Why Are There So Few Women in Computer Science?

The Problem and Its Settings

Have you ever asked yourself what is the reason that drives the average woman out of Computer Science? Have you ever wondered why is that that so few female students dare to go for the technology-related programs offered in most universities? Is it due to the fact that computing is often considered too technical or is it because girls do not like the symbolic image of the computer geek and believe that a subject such as Computer Science tends to desocialize and isolate the people dealing with it from the rest of the world?

In Search of the Reason Behind the Growing Gender Gap in the field of Computer Science and IT...

There are hundreds of possible explanations to the current decline in the number of women who choose to enter the field of Computer Science. If we want to focus on only one particular explanation of this negative trend, however, then this will undoubtedly be the lack of efforts put by the IT sector into interesting women in becoming involved in the development of modern technologies and playing a more significant role in today's IT revolution. This is hardly a surprise to anyone who has taken a closer look at the unpromising statistics regarding the portion of bachelor and master degrees in Computer Science granted to female students for the last couple of decades. Although an increasing number of IT companies have recently started to become aware of the benefits women can bring to the computing industry and, as a result, provided different stimuli for attracting them to the field, it is a shame that an area such as computing, which was born in contemporary times and had one of the highest proportions of female undergraduates in science and engineering during its peek in the 1980s, has remained alienated from women for such a long period of time.

A Glimpse into the History of Computing Technology

In contrst to most science and engineering disciplines such as Physics and Mathematics that have traditionally been dominated by men, Computer Science emerges as a formal academic field in the 1960s with women contributing an important part to its development as a unique subject. At that time the field is considered to have the greatest potential to become a model for gender equality. Yet, in the course of time the optimistic expectations regarding its ability to keep female scientists on its side prove to be wrong. The growing number of enthusiastic students willing to study computing that result from the high initial popularity of the discipline shortly after its introduction leads to a decline in the efforts put by education institutions into keeping the young people interested in the subject and encouraging further their ambitions to excell in the field. This is how instead of turning into an area that provides equal career opportunities for professional realization for male and female specialists, Computer Science ironicly becomes one of the least-balanced fields in modern society. Fewer girls dare to sign up for the primarily technically oriented undergarduate courses offered in most engineering schools and more and more students of higher standing that have previously been involved in the subject choose to drop their majors and switch to other technology-related but more female-friendly disciplines. This negative trend reaches extremes during the mid-1990s and the early 2000s when the number of women willing to go for Computer Science is reduced to the minimum. Even though the situation nowadays has improved a lot since then and is currently much better than what it used to be four or five years ago, there is still a large gender gap in the field that needs to be closed. Yet, it is good news that today's IT sector is gradually evolving and a growing number of companies start to realize that they need more women to enter the computing industry. As a result of them becoming aware of the different benefits of attracting female scientists to the field, the career prospects for Computer Science graduates are currently well above the average.

Who Are the Women in Computer Science?

In spite of the gender crisis that has taken over the IT sector for the past couple of decades, statistics tells us there is a group of young women that has proven to be significantly consistent in their aspirations to succeed in the modern technologies branch. This group includes primarily girls coming from families of engineers where one or both parents are involved in a field closely related to Computer Science. Those girls' experience with computing usually dates back to a very early age and, therefore, the reasoning behind their decisions to pursue an IT career cannot be as easily shaken as it could have been if they were new to the subject. Yet, there is this other group of young women that we need to worry about - it is comprised of all those female students that show a late interest in technology but sooner or later give it up due to external factors such as an unpleasant working environment, bad teaching, high pressure, or negative stereotypes. It is this group of women that most of all needs to be encouraged to stay in Computer Science and develop further their potential.

How To Make More Girls Enter the Field of Computer and Information Technologies?

Attracting female students with no previous experience in computing to the field of Information Technologies, however, might be a prety difficult task to accomplish. It is far from being impossible, though. First of all, it is important that we all understand that as opposed to male students, female students are usually not so interested in the technical aspects of Computer Science and, hence, they would rather pay a greater attention to the logic involved in the design and the development of different technologies than bother themselves with the implementation details. Therefore, if one wants to make a woman interested in a particular problem, one needs to show her that there is a logical connection among its different components and that this connection serves to achieve a meaningful purpose. Often the reason why so many girls give up their computing majors during their second year of studies in college is just the fact that they fail to know the other, not so technical, side of Computer Science. It is here that good teaching does make a difference. Training female students to distinguish between Computer Science and computer programming is crucial if one wants to keep in the field those of them that possess no single-minded passion for technology. Furthermore, Computer Science itself is far broader and intellectually richer than simple coding. It is more about analythical thinking and looking for the simplest and most efficient ways to accomplish complex tasks; it is about applying mathematical logic to the design and development of separate but at the same time interrelated systems that function as a single whole body.

What Shall We Expect in the Near Future?

In conclusion, even though the large gender gap in the field of Computer Science does represent one of the most serious challenges that the IT sector has ever faced during the short period of its existence, we have grounds to remain optimistic about the final outcome of the whole situation. Women are capable of contributing a great deal to the modern techonologies industry and today's organizations' managements are well aware of that fact. After all, this is something that a number of notable female computer pioneers such as Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, and Anita Borg have proven more than once through the ages since the creation of the first mechanical compting machine by Charles Babbage in 1821.

Sources

The narrative presented above is based on information taken from the following online sources:

• -- What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science? (The New York Times)
• -- The Decline of Women in Computer Science from 1940 - 1982 (Knol, A Unit of Knowledge)
• -- In Computer Science, A Growing Gender Gap. Women Shunning A Field Once Seen As Welcoming (The Boston Globe)