Women and Computers
During the 1980s the percentage of women in the United States in both computer science education and the information technology workforce reached record numbers, with 37.1% of Computer Science degrees being awarded to women in 1984. However these numbers have declined ever since. By 1990 the percentage had gone down to 29.9%, and by 1998 it was just 26.7%. As of today, according to the Computing Research Association, less than 12% of Computer Science degrees are awarded to women, and a similar decline can be observed in the number of women in the computing and information technology workforce, that has shrunk from a peak of 38% in the mid-1980s, to 33.1% in 1993, 29.6% in 1999, and close to 25% today.
This low and shrinking representation of women in IT-related fields is a well-known trend in most Western countries. Even though the percentage of women using computers and the Internet today is roughly the same as their male counterparts, and in spite of the fact that the number of women earning degrees in most other academic fields keeps increasing, they are however five times less likely to consider a technology-related career or plan on taking post-secondary technology classes.
All kinds of theories have sprung out trying to explain this phenomena, with the most simplistic minds quickly pointing out that ”a woman’s mind isn’t made for programming”. That statement is in fact just part of the widely spread Western perception that considers computer science as somehow masculine, while the low number of women is seen as evidence of how handicapped the female brain is when it comes to grasping complex technological concepts.
However this trend is not happening in other non-Western countries, the prime example being Malaysia , where there are more women than men working in IT related jobs, and where coincidentally computer science is deemed as a very suitable career for women, among other reasons because involves no hard, physical labour. That’s right, in the very same country where the law punishes women to be caned for having extra-marital affairs, most of their IT force is made up of women. Malaysia, by the way, is doing quite well in that field, growing well above other neighbouring countries where males dominate the technology scene.
Clearly the Malaysian experience alone would suffice to prove that women, aside of what their personal circumstances might be, can be interested in computing in the same way as their male counterparts, and perform as well, if not better than them. And it would seem that women in some societies aren’t pursuing careers in the computing industry not because they are not suited for them, but rather because they are being made to believe that those types of intellectual tasks are beyond their capabilities.
The solution would be changing the stereotypes that are leading these women to believe they are inadequate for skilled computing tasks, and this is being done since a while ago in movies an d TV series, where there are unrealistic numbers of unrealistic female characters playing all those roles traditionally reserved for males. Even Barbie joined in the effort to make computer science more attractive to girls with its “Vote for your favorite Barbie career” contest, in which “computer engineer” was a nominee for the first time in 2010. According to the company “Barbie designers worked closely with the Society of Women Engineers and the National Academy of Engineering to develop the wardrobe . . . Computer Engineer Barbie is geek chic.”
Geek chic? Is this the right approach? Even though Computer Engineer Barbie ended up winning the Popular Vote one can’t help to consider whether these type of initiatives are actually working against making computing attractive to girls. As one of the readers wrote “She looks cooler than most computer engineers of my acquaintance.” Truth is I have never met any computer engineers that looked even remotely similar to her, in the same way I have never met any female scientists that went to work looking like Barbie. And that’s precisely the point, a computer engineer is not supposed to look “geek chic”, among other things because computer engineering is not the kind of profession where personal looks matter at all. By creating unrealistic stereotypes of women at work, we’re making it even more difficult for real women to adapt.