Women disappearing from computer sciences…
I suspect visitors to a blog about boys falling behind must be puzzled why I post so many articles about the paucity of women in computer science and engineering. It’s because I worry that political correctness has shielded us from considering the full implications of the gender imbalances we’re seeing on college campuses. This Sunday’s NYTimes article does a nice job summarizing the dilemma in one area: Despite modest gains in some areas, especially medicine, women are falling behind in computer sciences.
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.
If women are to dominate higher education, there’s reason to care about what they major in — and don’t major in. Our international competitiveness depends on it. And yet all we get from feminist groups are comic-book takes on the issue: Must be discrimination, they say, as if thousands of computer science department across the country were joined together in a giant cabal. Something else is playing out here, and it warrants investigation. I don’t pretend to have the answers, but the sniff of political correctness surrounding this issue makes me determined to not relinquish this bone.
Tags: women in science
