Like Mary Jane Irwin and many others, I am concerned about the number of women in academic computer science. That's an understatement. I am increasingly alarmed. Over the past decade, I have taught fewer and fewer women in my undergraduate CS classes. This is not by choice, nor is it my preference: I am never comfortable in gender-segregated situations, except when these are convened for the purpose of exploring gender differences.
When I first started teaching, at UC Berkeley in 1979, there weren't many female students in my undergraduate classes. In a class of thirty, I'd see a handful of female faces. The gender mix, or rather the lack thereof, was even more noticeable at the graduate level. In a seminar of ten students, it was rare to see more than a couple of females. And there were very few female faculty.
According to a statistical series on undergraduate degree conferrals collected by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES of the US Department of Education), the gender ratio among CS undergraduates improved from 20% to nearly 40% over the period 1975 to 1984. Since then, there has been a steady decline. According to the latest data in my possession, in the class of 1993, only 28% of the CS BS degree recipients in the USA were female. This is a national average.
At most major universities, there are even fewer women in CS undergraduate programs than indicated by the national averages discussed above. I have in my possession a hardcopy printout of a detailed analysis of the NCES data for the class of 1990. This analysis was prepared by the MIT Planning Office in response to, I believe, a request by Hal Abelson. The percentage of females among the CS undergraduate degrees that year among the CRA's "top 12 schools" was 22% at Stanford, 21% at MIT, 24% at Carnegie-Mellon, 31% at UC Berkeley, 13% at Cornell, 12% at U Illinois-Urbana, 19% at U Washington, 21% at UT-Austin, 30% at UW-Madison, 19% at U South Carolina; the NCES series has no data for 1990 CS undergraduate degrees from UCLA or U Toronto. Note that only Berkeley and Madison are well-described by the national average (30%) gender ratio for undergraduate CS degree recipients. The rest are markedly lower.
According to the most recent Taulbee report, only 18% of the undergraduate CS degree recipients in 1994 were female. Historically, gender ratios for Master's degrees in CS are lower than those for Bachelor's degrees, and gender ratios for CS Ph.D. recipients are lower still. As we follow an age-cohort through the "pipeline" of advancement in academic CS, we see fewer and fewer females.
The current year, then, is a special moment in the history of our field: the gender ratios at all degree levels are approximately equal, at about 18%.
Gloomily, I'd say that the downward trend in undergraduate female participation in CS has not yet resulted in a downward trend in female CS Ph.D. conferrals.
You might believe that, at present, there is no downward trend in undergraduate female CS ratios. Alas, I disagree. There's another wave coming down the pipeline, judging from data collected by the College Board, 45 Columbus Avenue, New York NY 10023-6992 USA. (Dr. Nancy Griffeth of Bellcore got me started on the idea of collecting this series.)
Before high-school students take the graded portion of an SAT exam, they are asked to indicate their areas of highest interest among a list of "College Majors by Academic Area." The College Board publishes a yearly digest of their answers, broken down by gender and broad major field.
Among academic disciplines within science and engineering, for example, computer science stands out as the only field with a downward trend in interest among high-school females. Of particular concern to me is the sharp downward trend in 1991 through 1994, from 37% to 29%. My fear: this 8-point drop in gender ratio among intended majors in 1991-94 portends an 8-point drop in the gender ratio among BS CS degree recipients in 1994-97.
In case you're wondering about the absolute numbers of high-school students expressing interest in computer science, I've plotted these separately for females and males. At the risk of swamping you with undigested data, I've also plotted gender ratios and absolute numbers of females and males by broad area of interest.
I'm not at all comfortable with a field that is only 18% female, and I certainly won't be happy to see the smaller ratios I glumly foresee. Consider: even if there are 18% females in a CS program, a graduate-level seminar with five or ten students is unlikely to have more than a couple of females. In such situations, I fear that all participants (some of the time) and some participants (all of the time) will consider the gender of the female students as setting them apart from the others. In small doses and in some cases, such considerations are inevitable and possibly even admirable; but as a continual diet, it stunts the development of the males and discourages the females. This is, of course, my opinion. Probably every reader of this document can supply their own reasons why they would prefer (or not prefer!) to see more females in academic computer science.
I have a number of theories, but no hard evidence, for "why" fewer and fewer females are choosing to major in computer science. I recommend this question highly, as a fruitful topic for discussion in small groups, especially if the discussion is based on personal experience and not just statistical data.
cthombor@cs.umn.edu
Last modified: July 26, 1995
