Cate Sevilla writes...
Apparently there is a huge lack of women in the computer science industry. According to the National Science Foundation, 38% of the computer science bachelor’s degrees awarded in the United States in 1985 went to women, but in 2003, the figure was only at about 28%. Dr.Jan Cuny (a last name that I'm sure gets a lot of "accidental typos" in emails), is a computer scientist at the University of Oregon, and thinks that women don't want to participate in computer science programs in college because they're afraid of being labelled a nerd. “The nerd factor is huge," she says.
The National Center for Women and Information Technology reports that apparently when high school girls think of computer scientists they think of nerds, pocket protectors and staring a computer screen filled with confusing computer code all day. At first I thought this claim was outrageous, and surely, surely young girl's being afraid of being "nerdy" can't be linked to this slump of female computer scientists.
However, I have to wonder if Dr.Cuny is at least partially correct. Barbara Grosz, a computer scientist and dean of sciences at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard, agrees with Dr.Cuny by saying that girls "get the wrong idea in high school [about computer sciences] and we never see them to correct the misperception."
Being in my 20s, I have met and know many women who love their inner nerd, and are proud to be a geek. But I have to wonder if this whole "Geek is Chic" thing is coming about simply because women in their 20s have overcome (for the most part) their adolescent fear of what others think, feel more comfortable with themselves, and have branched out to meet other geeky girls. We no longer seem to be ashamed of the fact that we love things that are considered "nerdy", "bookish", or "computer geeky".
However, in high school, I don't really remember computer science being one of the careers that was made to look interesting to girls. Your career and major tends to define who you are when you're that age, so following the pack to be a Communications, English, or Business major makes sense. If these girls really do imagine computer programmers as a bunch of nerds sitting in front of a computer all day in a small, sweaty cubicle, than of course they're going to after the careers that are glamorized by their peers, and the media.
Thankfully, the computer science world is starting to reach out to these young girls and show them how diverse their field really is. For example, at Brown University, an organization called Women in Computer Science @ Brown runs the Artemis Project, which brings freshman girls from schools in Providence, Rhode Island, to the university campus for five weeks each summer. They teach the girls both concrete computer skills and abstract computer science concepts “in a positive and encouraging environment.”
Hopefully, programs like this will help break through the "nerd" stereotypes surrounding computers scientists, and encourage more women to join the field. Because, as Dr.Cuny puts it: "Shouldn’t everyone have a voice in shaping the technology?”
Cate Sevilla is the Assistant Editor of Dollymix, and a regular contributor to Shiny blogs. She wears her Nerd label with pride.
