As engineering professor Caroline Clarke Hayes notes, “The percentage of women has steadily increased over the last 40 years in almost all science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines. However, what is uniquely perplexing . . . is the percentage of women undergraduates [in information technology fields] has been steadily dropping for 20 years.”1 The future prospects do not seem bright either:
In their enthusiasm for computing, [instructors and other experts at high schools and universities] have created situations in which it is hard for novices to be enthusiastic. Like the overzealous tour guide who forces his charges to climb endless steps for the perfect view [or] to eat sheep’s eyeballs for the perfect cross-cultural [gastronomic] experience, . . . a [university IT] organization can produce more dropouts than recruits.2
Many of the obstacles that stand in women’s way are cultural and deeply ingrained, such as the nerd image of the dominant male or the pandemic objectification of women. But the educational framework, the setting that introduces women to information technology fields, would seem to be more easily changed. And if education can turn itself around, perhaps inroads will be made in ameliorating the other “turnoffs” as well.
Sports coaches and youth activity leaders have narrow vision. And, as the kids in their charge mature, coaches’ vision narrows further rather than broadens. At a time when kids have more and more demands on their time (homework, music, ballet, drama, science club, college visits), coaches’ vision becomes myopic. They demand monomaniacal devotion to the team and to the sport or activity they supervise. Rather than attempting to accommodate the increased demands on their charges’ time, those coaches’ and other youth leaders’ demands for total dedication is a turnoff for young women whose range of interests broadens as they mature.
Something similar happens in computing and information technology settings. In fact, the dissonance may be greater. “Male students start [computer] programming earlier. They develop a sense of familiarity; they tinker . . . and they develop a sense of mastery over the machine. They are introduced by a parent who is involved with computers . . . [and is] able to seed a budding interest. [Boys] are drawn by [computer] games designed to spark and engage boys’ interests.”3
By contrast, girls and young women have a different early history. “For most, the attraction [to computing] is more moderate and gradual. Most did not have the experience of falling in love at an early age that many boys did.”4 One can see this in a sampling of young women’s responses to interview questions:
In one study, three-quarters of the men but almost none of the women stated that they were magnetically attracted to computing when they were quite young.5 So by the time they (women) arrive there, information technology and computer science already have a “distinctly masculine culture” that is off-putting to young women. Piled upon the masculine culture is the nerd image. “The nerd stereotype is perhaps the most common explanation for low rates of participation by women: . . . the computer nerd [is] eccentric, unkempt, antisocial—and male.”6
Then, too, when young women begin to explore entry into the field, they have a wider circle of interests and a much broader conception of the place they would like to occupy in society. The contrast with the opposite gender again is stark. Males, most of whom already are there, either as students or teachers, have well-honed tunnel vision.
“For most women students . . . the study of computer science is made meaningful by its connections to other fields. Men are more likely to view their decision to study computer science and the study itself as ends in themselves.” Stated another way, “for most men . . . the decision to major in computer science barely reaches the level of conscious consideration: it is a natural extension of their lifelong passion for computing.” Women bring “contextual concerns” to their deliberations over whether to study computer science.7
Technical computer science curricula lack the larger interdisciplinary framework that women find appealing. Women are excited to learn how the use of computers might relate, for example, to environmental study or to improvements in health care. When men, including especially instructors, do relate computing to a broader context, the context borders on the frivolous, or seems that way, delving into football or professional baseball statistics. “Can a creative person, a ‘people person,’ care about the world and still be happy in computer science? The stereotype says ‘No.’”8
The one or two girls who do enroll in a computer class find that they are “perpetually teased about their bodies, their appearance, and their competence.”9 Like injured hermit crabs, the girls retreat into their shells, or they leave the field altogether.
So painted, the picture seems dark and forbidding. The upside, though, actually is brighter than it might seem. The reason for that cheerful outlook is that many or even most of the impediments to entry by females into computer science and information technology are fixable.
The literature on computer education is voluminous. Many of the authors plow the same furrow, albeit in differing, and sometimes enlightening, ways. These are four of the better sources:
Undoubtedly, other excellent sources exist; there will be still more in the future. On the other hand, certain of the source materials relating to diversity, education, and information technology are incredibly dense and technical, accessible only to the most dedicated reader, but the following sections present gleanings from the above sources.
Once students get more deeply involved in academic settings, 40 percent of the males but 65 percent of the females report that one or both parents participate with them in computer-based activities. “Parents impart their computer enthusiasm and skills to their children.”10 Judging from the paucity of girls and young women downstream (they represent only 9 percent of the test takers for the higher-level Advanced Placement examination in computer science) and overall,11 an insufficient number of girls are receiving this beneficial head start of parental involvement, more important for young women than for young men.
In some cases, parental attitudes may be part of a lopsided home environment. Today’s parents want to raise children of both genders with a full range of educational, sports, and career options. “And yet when it comes to toys, activities, room decorations and the like [a subset of parents] seem to forget their overall gender neutral objective. Often this results in unintentionally stereotyped decisions, like placing the computer in the son’s room ‘because he is using it more.’”12
The home environment is also affected by computer-based games and the gaming industry, which are extremely problematic. They are so male-oriented—not only male-oriented but male-dominated—that information technology and its anemic performance overall look good in comparison. Games and educational software are principal gateways to the computer world. Yet “blue software” (for boys) almost completely occupies the field. Almost exclusively, “blue software panders to male fantasies for violence and aggression.”13 Because this is such a turnoff for girls and young women, with the result that they are denied a principal path into information technology, the need for reform of the computer game industry forms the topic of chapter 22 of this book.
As Margolis and Fisher note in Unlocking the Clubhouse, “When girls do receive encouragement or enthusiasm from parents, it usually occurs later—in the form of encouraging daughters to take computer science in high school [or] to major in computer science in college.”14 One could say “Better late than never,” but tinkering and feeling comfortable putting your head under the hood often begin in the home environment. “Becoming engaged in game-playing does not constitute technological fluency, but game playing and [introduction to] software culture are important factors in making [girls] comfortable with computing.”15 Professor Sherry Turkle believes that a key ingredient in the computer science world is to be “an intrepid explorer.” An intrepid explorer “delights in risk taking and forging ahead into the unknown.” She elaborates, “One can’t be fearful of ‘getting lost’ or breaking the computer.”16 A legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur was said “to have a hacker background” and, as a result, “was not afraid to just go figure things out.”17
“Parents raise boys to take risks, expecting them to be adventurous and bold, while they encourage girls to be cautious and careful.”18 A positive home environment, one infused with parental involvement and enthusiasm, constitutes an important first step in inculcating in young women the comfort level needed to become a tinkerer or an “intrepid explorer.”
“In secondary schools . . . a repeated pattern plays out: a further increase in boys’ confidence, status and expertise in computing and a [further] decline in the interest and confidence of girls.” Teachers and administrators play a role, as “computer science curricula traditionally build upon and reflect the boys’ interests and experience levels. The girls, as ‘outsiders,’ do not see how they . . . fit in.”19
Physical facilities play a part. In the computer lab, “boys always get there [to the machines] first. Experienced, aware teachers find it necessary to have computer time assigned, specifically dedicating time for the girls to use the machines.” The film A League of Their Own chronicled the all-female professional baseball league of World War II days.20 In order to increase girls’ and young women’s involvement, more than a few computer science teachers advocate “a lab of their own.”
Why is this so? One potential explanation is positive—or in its own way more positive—while the other explanation may clause alarm.
The first explanation is that young women’s reticence is purposeful. Surveys of young women reveal a strong strain of “We can but we don’t want to” among female high school students. “Girls are not computer-phobic: they are computer reticent. . . . They express the ‘we can but we don’t want to’ philosophy.” Evidence bears this out: “In focus groups, most girls took offense at any suggestion that there may be differences in how boys and girls interact with computers.”21
Of course, girls may express an approach-avoidance outlook because they anticipate that teachers and male students will treat them as second-class citizens in the classroom and the computer lab once they get there. Alternatively, the “we don’t want to” part of “we can but we don’t want to” may be in anticipation of and revulsion at the nerd culture young women feel will surround and possibly swallow them in IT.
A second explanation is more sinister. “Girls’ ‘computer reticence’ stems from a perceived conflict between femininity and an interest in computers. . . . This notion persists.”22
Research suggests that boys and girls working together with computers means trouble for girls. . . . Females in mixed-sex groups were likely to have their competence questioned; their work critiqued, laughed at, or publicly criticized; and their concentration interrupted by males [as compared to young women] working alone or in all female groups.23
Girls and women report that, in predominantly male computer-related settings, they are exposed to off-color language, references, and jokes; crude comments about their bodies and their dress; crude behavior by males; pornographic pictures and photos on the workplace wall; outright sexual harassment as well as the experience of a hostile environment, and more.24
What drives women away from academic IT settings? “Perceptions [originating in] expectations of highly technical work, carried out in isolation . . . and with little social relevance. . . . Female students believe in the stereotype of the solitary nerd pounding away at the keyboard all day.”25 Professors Kathryn Bartol and William Aspray continue, “The nerd hacker image of singular focus, work addiction, and total absorption makes computer science a difficult subject to study for women.”
As computer labs and classrooms “become ‘bright white boys’ lunch clubs,” and as the exclusionary atmosphere continues after the school day ends, two persistent suggestions are to sponsor all-female computer clubs and reserve access to machines and computer labs for young women’s exclusive use. A further such suggestion is actually to reconfigure lab and classroom space.26
Only three all-male colleges remain in existence today (Hampton Sydney, Morehouse, and Wabash). In contrast, there are fifty-five or so all-female college and universities, including some leading schools (Wellesley, Smith, Mills, Barnard, St. Mary’s). Certain of them thrive. One piece of evidence in support of same-sex education’s continuing relevance is that Harvard University’s School of Business announced that, in recruiting for its MBA program, the school will pay particular attention to women’s colleges.27 Many educational experts advocate the single-sex alternative as a distinct possibility, more so for young women than men. Certain of the experts point to computer literacy in particular.
It is too late in the day to recommend single-sex education in computer subjects, at least across the board, but neither should the notion be gainsaid. An added fillip may come from one coed high school’s website “that shows only boys in the computer lab and presents girls only in cheerleading outfits.”28
More so at the university level than at the secondary level, requirements for prerequisite courses intervene. Because males are decidedly more likely to have a computer-based educational experience, prerequisite requirements for computer science courses discriminate more against young women. A number of factors exacerbate the likelihood that young women will lack the ability to meet the prerequisite requirements. For example, one factor is that women choose majors generally and commit to nascent interests, particularly in computer science–type subjects, much later than young men do. A second factor may be that insertion of prerequisite requirements constitutes a greater turnoff for women, given the lack of confidence they harbor as they approach the idea of following up on a budding interest or on a parent’s suggestion or urging. “Who feels welcome in the computing classroom . . . when undergraduate computer science programs begin requiring prior programming experience for introductory courses?” Requirements for prerequisites “send a negative message to women.”29
All of the “blueprints—the doors, walls, and windows” for computer education seem to be for “a boys’ clubhouse of computing education.”30 Most decidedly, a curriculum with prerequisites is an element of such thoughtless design.
Along similar lines, admissions policies that give substantial weight to prior experience may affect women more than men, particularly at selective colleges and universities. In this area, “an admissions policy should not give preference to more highly experienced students.”31
Another third negative curricular element is the insertion into the curriculum of a “weed-out” course. In an engineering curriculum, the make-or-break course may be thermodynamics. University chemistry majors come to a major hurdle when they encounter the required organic chemistry course. Business and accounting majors tremble as they face the cost accounting required offering. By contrast, liberal arts curricula (history, English, political science, fine arts, anthropology, sociology, and so on) traditionally do not require a make-or-break course—a weed-out offering—along the way. Moreover, it is extremely uncommon for arts and letters majors to have any type of weed-out course at all.
Studies have found that “weed-out” courses often constitute a major deterrent to students selecting a major.32 Computer science faculties often design curricula with a weed-out course in mind. Faculty expect the student to “toughen up,” or in oxymoronic terms, “to man up,” after an introductory course or two.33 Frequently, word spreads across the campus that the course in advance programming or the required courses in artificial intelligence and data analytics are centerpieces in the obstacle course designated for a major and leading to a degree in computer science.
Overall, “there is an absence of institutional intervention to actively support women students” in computer courses and majors.34 Requirements for prerequisite courses, admissions policies that give weight to prior experience in the field, and insertion of weed-out courses all work against more extensive female involvement in computer science.
In a survey of 892 high school math, science, and computer teachers, one in three (36 percent) found computers “an unpleasant but necessary part of teaching nowadays,” while a similar number (35 percent) found introduction of computers into their classes “a time consuming obstacle.”35 Studies of teachers “find high levels of anxiety about technology and little knowledge or experience in how to use it, other than for word processing or administrative tasks.”36
A driver of teachers’ insecurity is the inadequacy of training for them. When teachers do receive training, the training is done with the “drive-by approach,” consisting of an hour here or an hour there, or an in-service day at most. Only 11 percent of the 892 teachers surveyed responded that they had received training on how to integrate computers into their teaching and into their courses. Most often the in-service training consisted of basic “how-to” instruction on use of a computer.37 All teachers the survey canvassed agree that what is needed is “sustained and ongoing” teacher training on integration of computers into courses.38
Another defect in the pedagogy is the unavailability of role models for young women in computer science. Women constitute 42 percent, more or less, of full-time university faculty and 36 percent of the university chancellors and presidents.39 By contrast, women number only 11 percent of computer science faculty.40 At one prestigious university, women constitute only 10 percent of the computer science department faculty. Moreover, the proportion “has held steady for years.”41
Another in-depth study includes as the fourth and last of its recommendations: “Pay more attention to teaching. Put experienced, senior, better, and more emphatic teachers into the earliest [computer science] courses. Incorporate diversity training into teacher assistant training.”42 Teacher training is one area in which the IT industry easily can mount a coordinated effort, with particular attention paid to introduction and training of young women in the field.
Two points here. First is a subject already discussed, namely, that teachers weight teaching materials heavily toward contexts, such as baseball or football statistics, that have little interest for most young women and that usually have a decidedly masculine tone. The second point is that, anticipating the settings students may encounter in the future, teachers and curricula direct young women more toward instrumentalist contexts and skills such as word processing and data entry. Meanwhile, teachers point young men toward longer-lived subjects such as theory and skills such as programming and systems analysis.
Being directed toward entry-level, mechanical skills (such as word processing) becomes a turnoff for girls. They realize that teachers are downgrading them, mindlessly in their opinion. “That self-assessment causes many young women to turn their backs” on IT.43 To many teachers, administrators, and quite a few young women, “gender equity” means “girls’ mastery of tools such as PowerPoint, email, Internet research, information retrieval, word processing and data base management.” In turn, later on, those attitudes “cause women to be dramatically underrepresented in [true] IT jobs: systems analysis, software design, programming, and entrepreneurial roles.”44
For young women, the goal for teachers and academic experiences “must be ‘the fluency model’ of computer and information technology, not glorified clerical computer-based skills.”45 Administrators and planners “need to broaden the concept of computer literacy to include numeracy, cognitive science, problem solving and logic as well as systems planning, programming, software design, hardware usage, and so on.”46
To reiterate, female students want to use computer-based skills to study disease, urban planning, environmental concerns, and so on.47 An experienced teacher notes that “most software . . . is targeted for boys: action packed, scoring points, winning situations.” “Only [6] percent of computer science students could think of any software with female characters.”48 Another teacher relates, “If it calls for knocking things down, the girls perceive it as just for boys.”49
The organization One Laptop Per Child raises funds and receives equipment from a myriad of sources, with the goal of providing every child in K1–12 with his or her own computer. Too much of a good thing may be one result of attempting to reach computer science utopia. Researchers found, for example, that “impoverished students who received free laptops spent more time on games and chat rooms and less time on their homework than before.”50
Other findings in the Duke University study by economics professors Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd may just as alarming and may be more widespread among all students, not just those from impoverished backgrounds. “Students who gain access to a home computer between the 5th and the 8th grades tend to witness a persistent decline in reading and math scores. . . . The license to surf the Internet was also linked to lower grades [with] younger children.”51 Balance in all things includes the reminder that overemphasis on computer subjects can result in the neglect of history, English, geography, art, music, and other subjects. The Vigdor-Ladd study found that “with no adults to supervise, many kids used their networked devices not for schoolwork, but to play games, troll social media and download entertainment (And why not? Given their druthers, most adults would do the same).”52
Women, much more than men, want an ultimate link, or connection, between what they do in academic settings and the real world:
Women seem to differ from their male colleagues . . . in the high value they placed upon their work contributing to solving real world problems—which might range from turning abstract theories into usable software, to providing tools for firefighters and air traffic controllers . . . to helping business users satisfy their customers. . . . Interviewees [female computer programmers] wanted to see a connection between their technical work and the needs of real users.53
Computing is linked to investigations in medicine, public health, environmental science, epidemiology, famine control, art, and music. Yet textbooks and teachers focus on dry, abstract subjects or on professional sports. “The common practice of grouping computer science with math and science, both informally and organizationally, exacerbates the gender gap in computing.”54
When surveyed about what they value most in life, women IT majors gave the highest ratings to family, friends, a rich cultural life, and joy in living. By contrast, male IT majors rated occupation as having the highest importance. “Women placed a higher value on having a multifaceted life rather than being focused on only one dimension.”55
Computer science departments, programs, and classes must add meaningful context to technical subjects, demonstrating links from computer-based subjects to problem solving and betterment of the human condition. An influential study of university departments included as second of its four principal recommendations: “Add context. Relate [computer-based subjects] to solution of real world social and similar problems. Introduce curricula that exploit the connection between IT and other disciplines.”56 Additions could be recommendations to implement the intrepid explorer and fluency models for educating young women.