Gender disparity in computing
Gender disparity in computing concerns the disparity between the number of men in the field of computing in relation to the lack of women in the field. Originally, computing was seen as a female occupation. As the field evolved, the demographics changed, and the gender gap shifted from female dominated to male dominated. The believed need for more diversity and an equal gender gap has led to public policy debates regarding gender equality. Many organizations have sought to create initiatives to bring more women into the field of computing.
Background
In the early days of computers and computing, managers readily hired women as programming was seen as a low-skill clerical occupation, similar to telephone operators and typists. They often worked as "human computers," making complicated calculations and working in large groups, such as the Harvard Computers. They also worked on ballistic calculations and cryptography. However, since 1843 women have been making contributions to computer science when Charles Babbage hired Ada Lovelace as an assistant. Lovelace went on to write one of history's earliest computer programs. Joan Clarke was also one such woman who made immense contributions to computing during World War II. She was a British mathematician and codebreaker who worked at Bletchley Park on breaking codes generated by Enigma machines, eventually developing Alan Turing's bombe technology to aid in deciphering complex Nazi messages. Despite her significant contributions to cybersecurity, Clarke's accomplishments were largely ignored until recently. She died in 1986 but in 2013, was posthumously awarded an OBE for her work as a cryptanalyst. In 1946, the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical engineering and the United States Army Ballistics Research Laboratory began to research the trajectories of projectiles. However, there were only two hundred women involved in this research. Additionally, due to the lack of labor resources during the Second World War, women were actively recruited into computing jobs. The early programmers on machines such as ENIAC were mostly women., an example being the six women who designed the public demonstrations and prepared ENIAC for its public debut.Computer science was the fastest-growing college major and STEM discipline amongst women from the 1970s until the 1980s. According to the National Science Foundation's report on women receiving a Bachelor of Science degree, computer science is the only STEM discipline facing a downward slope after its peak in 1984, according to a report by the National Center for Women and Information Technology, which found that 37% of computer science undergraduate students were female that year, and has since shrunk to 18% as of 2018. Between this time, there was another wave of interest in computer science in the mid-1990s, but it was mainly men who were a part of this. There was a slight increase in women in computer science from the 2000s to the 2010s, as around 12% of computer science majors were women in the mid-2000s. Bumble co-founder Alex Williamson has claimed that "While some young girls show interest in coding and computer-related areas at an early age, they are pushed out of those areas the ages of 13-17. The reasons range from peer pressure to a lack of role models and support to a general misperception of what STEM careers look like in the real world."
In a 2015 study across undergraduate students in computer science on gender and race identified factors over time that have contributed to the gender disparity in computing. One reason was the students' perception in their math ability, as women tended to rate themselves to be lower in mathematical skills in comparison to their male counterparts. However, the salience of this factor has decreased over time.
According to Janet Abbate, the work that the ENIAC women did during World War II was considered menial because of preconceived gender notions. These women were not allowed to develop hardware, so it became associated as a man's job. Additionally, software development was new, and women chose to work in this field because they had prior experience as 'human computers.' However, many computer science programs, including Princeton, wouldn't admit women into their program.
Gender gap
A survey conducted by SWIFT, Supporting Women in Information Technology, based in Vancouver, Canada, asked 7,411 participants questions about their career choices. The survey found that females are less interested in computer science than males. From 1971 to 2011, survey data was collected to document trends from majors in computer science, discover individualities of both males and females who selected computer science as their majors, and identify the cause of gender gaps. A key timeline between the 1990s to 2011 revealed a significantly low representation of women. In general, women who pursued a computer science degree felt less confident than males when using a computer. This study shows that male students have more confidence than females in the computing field.The Project "Strategies of Inclusion: Gender and the Information Society" released its findings based on research conducted in 48 separate case studies all over Europe. The results focus on recruiting as well as retention techniques for women already in the field. These techniques range from the introduction of role models, advertisement campaigns, and the allocation of quotas. The purpose of these techniques are to make the computing field more gender-neutral.
Research suggests that Malaysia has an equal split that varies around the halfway mark. A job in the computing industry also implies a safe work environment. There was a strong belief by the previous generation that IT would be a flourishing sector with many job opportunities. This caused parents to encourage their children to major in computing, no matter their gender.
In India, a growing number of women are studying and taking careers in technology fields. The percentage of women engineers graduating from IIT Bombay grew from
1.8% in 1972 to 8% in 2005. Additionally, in 2014, Arab women made up 59% of all the students enrolled in computer science at government universities located in Saudi Arabia. The women in Eastern Europe, especially in Bulgaria and Romania, have high coding and technology rates. However, women remain underrepresented in technology fields all around the world.
Based on recent research involving the gender gap in computer science, a significant contribution comes from families. Additionally, other contributions come from friends and classmates. These contributions encourage women to continue their studies in computer science. However, a lack of support can weaken a women's pledge to the field. For example, when circumstances in the department are adverse, those with frail assurance leave at a higher rate than those with adequate support. This happens because faculty can discourage women with unintentional comments or the expectation that a man's knowledge is the basis of success in computer science.
Statistics in education
In the United States, the proportion of women represented in the computer science field peaked around the mid-1980s and has declined ever since. In 1984, 37.1% of Computer Science degrees were awarded to women. However, this percentage dropped to 29.9% in 1990 and 26.7% in 1998. Data from the Computing Research Association indicates that fewer than 12% of computer science bachelor's degrees were awarded to women at U.S. PhD-granting institutions in 2011. Additionally, the percentage of women earning a master's degree peaked around 33% in 2000 but dropped to 27% in 2008. International studies of ICT tertiary education note several countries where women outnumber men, with these countries more likely to be less gender equal than those with fewer women taking ICT courses. UNESCO termed this disparity the "ICT Gender Equality Paradox", where in more gender equal countries women were less likely to study computing and related courses.Within the United States, the representation of women in the computing field has declined over the past thirty years. As of 2018, women made up 18% of undergraduates in computer science majors. In the study, "Anatomy of an Enduring Gender Gap: The Evolution of Women's Participation in Computer Science,"researchers found an overall decline in women's determination to major in the computer science field. They found that by 2011 only 0.4% of women planned to major in computer science compared to 3.3% of men. The study also found that 15% of computer science majors were women.
Although teenage girls are using computers and the internet at rates similar to their male peers, they are five times less likely to consider a technology-related career or take post-secondary technology classes. The National Center for Women & Information Technology reports that of the SAT takers who intend to major in computer science, the proportion of girls has steadily decreased from 20 percent in 2001 to 12 percent in 2006.
According to a College Board report in 2006, there were slightly more girls than boys who reported having "course work or experience" in computer literacy, word processing, internet activity, and creating spreadsheets. It was also determined that more boys than girls, 59% vs. 41%, reported course work or experience with computer programming, although this may be caused by false reporting. Of the 146,437 students who reported having no course work or experience, 61% were girls, and 39% were boys.
In 2006, 2,594 girls and 12,068 boys took the AP Computer Science A exam, while 517 girls and 4,422 boys took the more advanced AP Computer Science AB exam. From 1996 to 2004, girls made up 17% of those taking the AP Computer Science A exam and around 10% of those taking the AP Computer Science AB exam.
In England, females made up 20% of GCSE and 10% of A-level computer science cohorts in 2019. Additionally, they outperformed males at GCSE computer science, but when controlling for their achievement in other subjects, i.e. attempting to compare males and females of similar grade profiles, males achieved significantly higher grades in computer science. Across all UK universities, females earned significantly fewer first-class degrees than males, a pattern not seen in other degree areas.
To more fully understand the areas of need in regards to education, there needs to be more intersectional CS education research, as current intersectional research pertains to STEM and CS education research examines demographic factors individually.