What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science?

NY Times ^ | November 16, 2008 | RANDALL STROSS

[neverdem]

Digital Domain

ELLEN SPERTUS, a graduate student at M.I.T., wondered why the computer camp she had attended as a girl had a boy-girl ratio of six to one. And why were only 20 percent of computer science undergraduates at M.I.T. female? She published a 124-page paper, “Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists?”, that catalogued different cultural biases that discouraged girls and women from pursuing a career in the field. The year was 1991.

Computer science has changed considerably since then. Now, there are even fewer women entering the field. Why this is so remains a matter of dispute.

What’s particularly puzzling is that the explanations for under-representation of women that were assembled back in 1991 applied to all technical fields. Yet women have achieved broad parity with men in almost every other technical pursuit. When all science and engineering fields are considered, the percentage of bachelor’s degree recipients who are women has improved to 51 percent in 2004-5 from 39 percent in 1984-85, according to National Science Foundation surveys.

When one looks at computer science in particular, however, the proportion of women has been falling. In 2001-2, only 28 percent of all undergraduate degrees in computer science went to women. By 2004-5, the number had declined to only 22 percent. Data collected by the Computing Research Association showed even fewer women at research universities like M.I.T.: women accounted for only 12 percent of undergraduate degrees in computer science and engineering in the United States and Canada granted in 2006-7 by Ph.D.-granting institutions, down from 19 percent in 2001-2. Many computer science departments report that women now make up less than 10 percent of the newest undergraduates.

In 1998, when Ms. Spertus received her Ph.D. in computer science, women received 14 percent of the doctorates granted in the field...

[Myrddin]

I'll check out NUS Instruments, thanks for the tip. That wouldn't interfere with your flow of work from them, would it?

No. I don't work with them very often. The microcontroller fix was necessary to average out noise on a temperature monitoring circuit that turn out to be 3x higher than previously disclosed. I simply showed them a faster way to accomplish the filter on the 8051. That brought the update rate into compliance. End of task.

The company is currently owned by Curtiss Wright. It was previously owned by Scientech. Owners change, the core business doesn't. You can find info at this link. Bob Queenan is the engineering manager.

My designs are all surface mount as well. Mostly to reduce mass on boards used in high G environments on rail cars.

[Starwolf]

For Christmas after she was accepted in the Comp Sci program my daugher got the Knuth Vol 1-3 in hardback from me. She did not understand why until later. Unfortunately I can not get Vol 4 in the same look.

[Myrddin]

I'm similarly disappointed in not have a hardback Vol 4 that matches Vol 1-3. Still, the combinatorial topic is very relevant to my original field of molecular biology and genetics. Doing factorial calculations with a simple add, subtract,multiply,divide calculator was no fun. My graduation gift was an HP25. In a matter of days, I had cobbled up programs on the HP25 to replace most of the tables in the Schaum's Genetics book. In my freshman physics class, I was calculating square roots with an approximation method while my classmates pushed a button on their HP35 calculators. I kept a slide rule with me to get the first approximation on the calculator :-(