Indiana Women in Tech Week: Closing the gender gap
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In the late 1980’s, about 30% of computer science degrees were awarded to women. During that same time, I was a high school student enrolled in Basic and Fortran classes. I don’t recall many, if any, other girls in my class and there certainly wasn’t anyone suggesting, yet alone encouraging me to study computer science in college.
Fast forward to 2023 and the number of women graduates in computer science has dropped to under 20%. But why?
I find it hard to believe it’s a lack of interest and even if it is, it is certainly not the exclusive reason for the drop.
The Marketing Theory
In 2014, NPR reported that the “share of women in computer science started falling at roughly the same moment when personal computers started showing up in U.S. homes in significant numbers. You could play pong or simple shooting games, maybe do some word processing.”
Now think about the target audience for video games both then and now. It’s not a tough jump to assume these “toys” were marketed primarily to boys or men.
This same article from NPR reports that in the 1990s, a researcher named Jane Margolis interviewed hundreds of computer science students at Carnegie Mellon University. She found families were far more likely to buy computers for boys than girls.
The Drop-Out Theories
According to content provided by Stanford University, women drop out of computer science due to four factors:
- Isolation – Being the minority in a group is hard. One coping mechanism (I’ll call it survivalism) is choosing to be “one of the guys” (aka “smart over feminine”) in lieu of social time/outlets with other women. Many women find it simply not worth it to become part of a male framework.
- Loss of Interest – Many women are3 attracted to the problem-solving aspects of computer science and become less interested when diving into the more technical, non-humanitarian problems.
- Lack of Confidence – The confidence and frequency with which their male peers speak of their achievements and the lack of affirmation while in groups largely composed of male peers add to confidence issues for women.
- Lack of Role Models – Few women CS professors and few women CS leaders has led to a lack of role models. Add onto that the fact that the women leaders out there have likely come up through the isolation theory listed above. Young women see this and may not want that path.
My theory?
I think it’s the age-old difficulty of moving a society’s mindset, a mindset that still primarily encourages women (and men) to pursue more stereotypical gender roles. Well – I didn’t end up studying computer science in college – I studied dance and communications. But looking back over the last 30 years, nearly every door that opened for me opened because of my tech skills; many of which I acquired primarily on my own.
Any of the above theories lead us directly to gender gap challenges. Gaps we can help overcome through celebrating, amplifying, and modeling the women in tech today. Opportunities in tech and tech-related roles provide flexible, lucrative career paths. Paths with endless opportunities and that’s why Indiana Women in Tech Week is so important. We must be the models our young women need.
Join this statewide celebration of the accomplishments of Indiana women in tech and to be the role models that encourage every girl and young woman out there to stick with it. There is a place for you and we are making space for you.
Visit indianawomenintechweek.com to find out how you can be a part of this statewide celebration!
And shout out to my dad who bought our family a Tandy computer in the mid 80’s, so I could learn to code. It mattered.