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Women in Computer Science
Josh Kurtz
Issue date: 1/11/08 Section: News
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The number of women in America applying for professorships in the field has also decreased, according to the Center.
Computer science was considered a subject that had the potential to be a model field for gender equity when its popularity grew in the early 1980s, the Boston Globe wrote.
According to the National Science Foundation, women today earn less than 30 percent of all bachelor's degrees in computer science. The high point was in 1985, when women earned 38 percent of all degrees in the subject.
"It's a well-known problem," Yuanfang Cai, a Drexel professor of computer science, said about the gender difference in the field.
Drexel, a school often cited for its technology programs, has experienced the drop in the number of women in computer science.
According to Chad Ethridge, assistant director of the Drexel University Office of Undergraduate Admissions, Drexel has six incoming women computer science majors for the 2007-2008 school year. Four of these majors are transfer students, among whom two are international students, and the other two students are freshmen.
By comparison, 73 male computer science majors entered Drexel as freshmen or transfer students this year.
Over the last three years, a total of 21 female computer science students have entered Drexel as either freshmen or transfer students, while 224 male computer science majors have entered Drexel over the same time period, Ethridge said.
Cai said she recently had a 25-person software architecture class made up entirely of males.
She also said she believes that part of the reason for the gender gap is the time constraints that the field requires, that women who want to have families can have a difficult time staying in the field, in part because it is a subject where people need to constantly learn new material.
However, Cai said that women who really enjoy the field can overcome these obstacles.
Cai attended college in China, where she said a greater percentage of women have attained degrees in computer science.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Sam
posted 1/11/08 @ 11:12 AM EST
Who cares? There are plenty of female computer science majors in India and China where this work is going.
Woman in the U.S. need to prepare for the "new, higher value jobs" that the globalists assure us are coming as a result of oursourcing all of this mundane computer science stuff. (Continued…)
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