Survey shows young women are less confident with computers than men are
This year’s freshmen in the United States are the most computer savvy in history, according to UCLA’s most recent survey of college-bound high school graduates.
But the survey also shows young women are much less confident than men with their computer skills, and only 1.8 percent have an interest in computer technology. Even with starting salaries higher than $40,000, the computer science industry remains monopolized by men – and plagued by staffing shortages, according to the Information Technology Association of America.
Last year, Don Cooley’s 7:30 a.m. computer science class at Utah State University had 23 students in it – two were women.
“And the class that followed was sociology or something, and it was full of women. I think it had maybe two men,” Cooley said.
At USU, 52.4 percent of the population is female. The Computer Science department is only 17 percent female. Should this be a red flag for gender-equality groups? Experts in the field, both men and women, say no – something deeper than chauvinism is going on here.
Women have historically lagged in number behind men in science fields, but according to the Association of Computing Machinery’s Committee on Women, in 1996 55.2 percent of bachelor’s degrees awarded in the United States went to women. The percentage has been rising consistently for decades in all fields, including biological science, engineering and physical science.
Computer science is the black sheep. Between 1983 and 1996, the percentage of computer science degrees awarded to women dropped from a high of 37.1 percent to 27.5 percent.
“I guess if math was having trouble getting women interested, I would say it was just Barbie saying math is hard,” said Vicky Allen, an associate professor in the Computer Science department at USU. “But there’s obviously something else going on here.”
Allen entered the field in the footsteps of her father, who also taught computer science at USU.
“It’s amazing how often it’s, ‘It was my dad, my older brother, an uncle,'” she said. “You almost never hear, ‘I took a computer science class and just really enjoyed it.’ Not from girls.”
“It’s almost like girls have to have really strong direction from someone, they don’t just go into these careers by themselves,” she said.
The ACM’s Committee on Women was founded to get to the bottom of this trend and find a way to reverse it. Denise Gürer, co-chair of the organization, led a team studying what she termed the “Incredible Shrinking Pipeline” – referring to the declining numbers of females graduating in computer science.
“I think the essential reason is a combination of things,” she said. “There are a lot of subtle social factors coming into play.”
Part of the problem is the computer industry itself isn’t aimed toward a female audience, Gurer said.
In the UCLA survey, 9.6 percent of women said they played video or computer games for three or more hours a week. More than four times that many men did.
“The companies will tell you that they aim their games at boys,” Gurer said.
Companies bank on producing action-packed games that appeal to men – they sell better than storyline-centered games like Myst, which appeal to women.
“So girls are just bored, because you’re doing the same things over and over. You’ve got the same background, the same music,” Gurer said. “The ‘shoot-’em-up’ stuff gets old very quickly.”
The problem is significant, because the computer industry evolves as people play with the system, learn how it works, take it apart and make it better – none of which can happen if the interest isn’t there in the first place, she said.
“I think that the way women look at technology and men look at technology is different,” she said. “It’s the approach to technology, not technology itself that’s the issue here.”
Russ Weeks teaches beginning and advanced computer science at Logan High School and said the girls in his advanced classes this year are both doing extremely well. But there are only two of them; one in each of two 20-to 25-student classes. Weeks said he suspects it’s a self-perpetuating problem, and might suggest the school add a computer class just for girls, “so if there’s any factor there of intimidation, we can take care of it.”
Whatever the problem is, many groups are working to combat it.
“I don’t know how long it will take and if it will ever go the other way,” Allen said. “I think those that are here are happy, it’s just a matter of getting them here.”