Here's a nice long post from Flashes of Panic that reports on a recent talk by Maria Klawe, dean of engineering at Princeton. I'm grateful to PJM for drawing my attention to this post by commenting on my post of Dec. 12. PJM asked for my comments and you know it doesn't take much of an invitation to get Zuska talking. So here goes.
First of all, I think Maria Klawe totally rocks out loud and Princeton is damn lucky to have her.
Second, the decline in percentage of computer science degrees awarded to women in the U.S. is a shameful thing. According to the NSF, the peak year for women's enrollment was - want to guess? If you guessed 1985, go to the head of the class. In that year, the percentage of CS degrees awarded to women was 37%. It had dropped to 28% by 2001. And, according to the Computing Research Association,
Freshmen interest levels at any given point have been an accurate predictor of trends in the number of degrees granted four to five years later...The upcoming drop in CS degree production will highlight the field's inability to appeal to incoming female undergraduates. Overall, interest in CS among women fell 80 percent between 1998 and 2004, and 93 percent since its peak in 1982.
This is one of the many reasons why I cannot abide to hear stated even one more time that we just need to wait and we will see the number of women undergraduates/graduate students/faculty increase. There's no freaking guarantee, and computer science is a prime example.
What has contributed to the precipitous drop of women enrolled in computer science? The decline in enrollment of women more or less coincides with the nationwide shift for computer science programs to be located in schools of engineering, from their original homes in arts & sciences. I think at least part of the blame has to lie with engineering's crap-ass ability to attract women.
The maintenance of the present disreputable condition, however, is the result of many other factors. Klawe discussed some of these, including stereotypes about computer scientists, what they do, and how they do it. Personally, I think the stereotype of CS people - programming 24/7, having no social skills, and "dreaming in code" as one girl described it in Unlocking the Clubhouse - is off-putting to many boys as well. All the people who want to have a life and who have a broad range of interests are opting out of CS. Unfortunately, these are just the people who would significantly benefit society if they entered computer science. I'm not going to make the argument why, here. If you still need to have it explained to you why diversity is good and why we need human beings rather than gear heads doing our science and engineering, go read some other blog.
So - what are the solutions to this intractable problem? According to PJM, Klawe made several suggestions:
Increasing girls’ and women’s interest in CS and engineering, increasing their confidence within the fields, and increasing their sense of belonging.
This is all nice. But I have two problems with this.
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The proposed solutions all revolve around doing something to or for girls/women in order to bring them into CS. This focus, intentionally or not, locates the problem within women. Women need their interest raised, women need their confidence increased, women need their sense of belonging improved. It seems to me that we ought to be phrasing the issue this way: CS needs to improve its appeal to women, CS needs to stop behaviors and practices that undermine women's confidence, CS needs to work at developing a more inclusive environment.
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If you disagree with Point #1, then I have this to say to you. How will you increase girls' interest, confidence, sense of belonging, if nothing at all in CS education and the workplace changes? If we accept that the focus has to be on doing something to/for girls, then what we are saying is that things are just fine and dandy as they are, and what we have to do is get those recalcitrant girls to see that the anti-social 24/7 programming life is where it's at, baby.
Now, if you are going to carp and moan about how incredibly difficult it would be to make all these changes in the CS culture, I have no patience. I never said it would be easy or instant. I only said it is necessary. And if you think it can't be done, then go look at what they did at Carnegie Mellon - read Unlocking the Clubhouse. In just 5 years they went from a pitiful 8% women in CS to a fantastic 42%. And if you want to carp about how your public university can't do the things that Carnegie Mellon did as a private university, go carp to someone else. If you can't learn anything of use from Unlocking the Clubhouse, you aren't trying. And if you don't feel ashamed of how your department is contributing to the attrition of women from CS, and you don't want to do anything about it - well, Zuska wishes a foul, foul rash upon you.
3:33:30 PM 
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