Where did the Girls Go?

In the United States, women earn well over half of the bachelor’s degrees awarded each year. They represent nearly 50 percent of the workforce. Through extensive STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) programs and heavy encouragement, women’s participation in science and math as a whole (though still far less than their representation in the population) has been on the rise. However, one number remains persistently low: the number of women in computer science. It is the only STEM field that has seen a decline in female participation over the last 10 years. At top research universities like Wash U, females earn only 14 percent of computer science degrees

Many people assume that women have never been interested in this field, but women were well represented in the teams that pioneered the science. Women like Grace Hopper, Jean Sammet, and the person regarded to be the first programmer ever, Ada Lovelace, worked on teams with other women to invent new programming languages, compilers, security measures, and more. Computer science used to be a woman’s world, with nearly 40 percent of degrees and jobs being held by women in the mid-1980s. So why isn’t computer science seen, like teaching and nursing, as a field for women today? More simply, where did all the girls go?

It has been hypothesized that the gendering of computer science began in the 1980s, as personal computers began to be available, and with them came the first video games. Seen as a male pursuit, parents bought computers for their sons and dolls for their daughters. This early connection is a crucial factor in isolating women from the field. When I ask my female friends why they haven’t taken a computer science class, they usually respond, “I don’t play video games,” or, “It doesn’t seem like something I’d be good at.” Women, with less exposure to these technologies going into universities, assume that computer science belongs to the 90’s movie geek, the professional gamer, or the boy who hacked Neopets growing up. I for one had never thought about taking any sort of computer science class before college, and no one had ever suggested that I should. Young women like myself enter college every day without an understanding of what computer science is, and what computer scientists do. It’s not always video games and Star Trek, it’s logic, creativity, design, problem solving, and more.

However, the gendering of computer science is a social problem as much as an academic one. Consider the archetype of two children, one male, one female, who grew up loving to use computers. As the boy enters high school, he may be considered ‘geeky,’ but the nerdy white boy is both an accepted personality type and often romanticized one. He may not be homecoming king, but he will likely be encouraged to pursue engineering, get a well-paying job, and be considered smart and successful. Young boys (and their families and peers) have the Bill Gateses and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world to model themselves after.

But consider a young girl who enters high school preferring to play on her computer than do ballet or hang out with friends. This girl would draw much more concern, and more pressure to adopt a more social or traditionally feminine lifestyle. Because a woman’s value is so deeply tied to her desirability, women are not encouraged (if not actively discouraged) to pursue a “geeky” lifestyle because it is perceived as less attractive. After all, the image of “nerdy” girls in the media isn’t a clever young programmer, or Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, but cliché teen girls who take off their glasses, let down their hair, and suddenly become worth paying attention to. With these negative assumptions about girls who code, how can we be surprised that only four percent of women entering college intend to major in computer science? If you include only minority women, the numbers drop even more precipitously.

Society’s narrow views on 1) what type of person a computer scientist is and 2) what computer scientists do is ultimately the reason why women are so underrepresented in the field. Brilliant women made computer science what it is today, and it cannot progress to its full potential if half of the population believes that it is a space where they don’t belong. Learning computer science doesn’t resign you to a lifetime hunched over a computer in a cubicle papered with Battlestar Galactica posters; it gives people a chance to solve puzzles, develop a wide range of skills, and engage creatively with difficult problems. Computer science needs women as much as women need computer science. It’s time to bring the girls back.