Female representation in computer science is, frankly, pretty sad. In fact, women make up only 26% of “Computer Science and Mathematical Science professionals” in the United States (Google Inc., 2014, p. 2). Similarly, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that women comprise just over 29% of the “Computer and Software” category as of 2013 (Ullman, 2013, p. 1). However, back when the field was just beginning to turn itself into the massive consumer industry that it is today, women had a vastly higher representation in the field. As an article by Bowman (2014) described, from around 1965 to 1984, the percentage of women in medical school, law school, physical sciences, and computer science education was steadily rising from 5-15% to an eventual ~45-50% (p. 1). However in 1984, with the introduction of Apple’s first personal computer and the subsequent commercialization and targeted advertising that followed, computer science took a heavy nose dive and never quite recovered, while the other percentages continued to steadily rise. A study by Google mentions this effect, saying that the percentage of women graduating with a STEM-related degree “has declined to 18% from a 37% peak in the mid-1980s” (Google Inc., 2014, p. 2).

Meanwhile, large technology companies are struggling to find enough qualified employees to work in software development. This has been stated to be a major concern in many academic studies; “The overall need for [computer science] professionals has severely outstripped the number of graduates entering the workforce” according to the same Google study (Google Inc., 2014, p. 2). In another study, the author cited that “the number of incoming college freshman specifying computer science as a major has dropped 60% over the last 4 years” (Carter, 2006, p. 27). Recruiting quality employees is a big challenge, and with female representation in the field being so low, the most logical solution is to utilize a demographic that remains largely untapped. The female demographic has a large potential to increase the depth of the employee pool.

Unfortunately, though, the mass media is molding the future female generation of America to think that they are not capable of doing computer science-related work. In recent news, Mattel released a children’s book titled “I Can Be A Computer Engineer”, in which the main character Barbie fumbles around with a computer and asks her male friends to help her fix all the things she’s broken in the process. Females are perfectly capable of doing technical work, but the author tragically portrays Barbie in a way that implies that their abilities in computer science are inadequate, which is the exact opposite of the truth. Many young women have succeeded in the field.

Take Jennie Lamere, for example (Libelson, 2013, p. 1). She competed in a Hackathon in Massachusetts – where computer programmers get together to work on programming competition projects. She developed the winning project, a spoiler alert filter for Twitter feeds, in a single day, by herself. She was the only girl out of the 80 submissions. Similarly, a workshop program in Pennsylvania specifically for women found that when given computer science projects to work on (specifically database applications), women were quite capable of completing the assignment (Harshbarger & Rosson, 2012, p. 67). It’s been shown conclusively that females are perfectly capable of performing technical work; the problem is they just aren’t there in the field.

So the question remains: How do companies attract more women into computer science? A number of solutions and strategies have been shown to increase female interest in the field and incite action for women to pursue it. An analysis of many research studies across many aspects of the problem suggests that in order to increase the percentage of women in the computer science workforce, technology companies and computer science organizations must implement more hands-on computer science workshops and e-mentoring opportunities specifically for women, and high schools must increase the number of computer science classes available to students in order to increase its formal academic presence.

Early in 2014, Google conducted a study to quantify and qualify the most influential factors in young women’s decisions to pursue computer science, as these factors are what play into young women’s major career and college decisions, such as major declaration. The four main factors that the study found were “social encouragement”, “self-perception”, “academic exposure”, and “career perception” (Google, 2014, p. 2). Social encouragement, at 28% of the influence to purse computer science, was defined to be “positive reinforcement from family and peers”, in the form of verbal encouragement and support. Self-perception, at 17%, was defined as a young female’s perception of her skill in math and problem solving. Academic exposure, accounting for 22.4%, was defined as “the ability to participate in [computer science] courses and activities”. Finally, career perception was the heaviest influence on the decision at 27.5%, defined as the perception of the computer science career (Google Inc., 2014, p. 5). These four factors account for a whopping 94.9% of the total influence on women’s decisions to pursue computer science. Logically then, it makes sense to implement activities and programs that engage these four factors as much as possible to maximize interest in the field. Fortunately, the top four are also all highly controllable. Solutions to influences such as age of first computer exposure are not feasible, but they are far down the list. Hands-on workshops, e-mentoring opportunities, and greater presence of computer science in the education system through more classes in academic institutions cover all four of the top influences, so the implementation of them should yield highly effective results.

It is safe to say that most females simply don’t find computer science or related fields particularly interesting or feminine in nature. But formal academic exposure has been shown to yield positive results on women’s interest in computer science. In a study by L. Carter (2006), which investigated via a survey the reasons that high school males and females did not pursue computer science, very few participants (only 20%) had an accurate knowledge of what computer science was or what computer scientists studied (Carter, 2006, p. 30). Less than a third of students had any experience beyond basic software usage and a mere 8% had taken formal computer science classes (Carter, 2006, p. 30). Yet of the students who listed programming as a negative influence on their decision to not pursue computer science, 89% had no programming experience, and thus could not make an educated decision on the matter (Carter, 2006, p. 30). More classes, and possibly even required classes, would allow students to make a more informed decision on pursuing computer science. In fact, in the study, ten non-computer science females took a computer science class during the semester of the study, and out of the ten, six went on to “become a TA for the courses for the next year, add a minor in computer science, or change their major to computer science”, and all reported that “they previously had no idea what computer science was” (Carter, 206, p. 31). Academic exposure, one of the four most influential decision factors in pursuing computer science according to the study by Google Inc. (2014), was strongly shown to increase interest in the field. Carter concluded that a major cause of the lack of female interest in the field is an incorrect perception, and that academic exposure changed the perception to a more accurate one that spurred more interest among the female participants in the study.

Professional development meets an important need in computer science; it has been observed that mentoring and professional development opportunities are more limited for women in computer science than men (Cohoon & Raoking, 2013, p. 1), thus there is a definite need for more opportunities. Professional development programs can yield increased interest in a computer science education, as it has been shown that self-confidence and promotability among females in computer science increases after attending such programs (Cohoon & Raoking, 2013, p. 621). A professional development workshop was held by the researchers to study the effects of professional development workshops on women’s self-confidence in and career perception of computer science, as well as the workshops’ effects on promotability. In general, participants reported “more knowledge and use of career skills” and “more confidence”, and furthermore, the positive effects were found to be present long after the closing of the study (Cohoon & Raoking, 2013, p. 4). Promotability was increased with the professional development workshop as well. Increased promotability of women in computer science increases the number of women in positions of higher leadership, which in turn leads to more female role models in computer science for other women to follow.

Hands-on workshops have also been shown to have positive effects on women’s perceptions of the field. One particular study by Harshbarger & Rosson (2012) evaluated the effect of hands-on computer science workshops specifically tailored for women on women’s interest and perceptions of the computer science field (p. 67). The researchers used a database development application called wProjects to let women in the workshop complete projects that tested their ability to grasp fundamental programming and computer science concepts. The women had no prior experience in programming or databases, and the workshop was specifically designed to enhance educational benefit. A survey about participants’ perceptions and understandings of computer science was given out before and after the workshop. All of the women in the study completed their database development projects and they understood and generally enjoyed the workshop. It was concluded that workshops can and conclusively do “remediate the misunderstandings and misperceptions about computer-related education and careers that are often held by young women” (Harshbarger & Rosson, 2012, p. 70). Additionally, the rating for “will have fun developing the application” increased from pre-workshop to post-workshop, as well as “able to develop application well” and “understand the project assigned”. The researchers concluded that workshops have a positive impact on both self-perception of ability in computer science-related skills and career perception, two of the main influences found in the Google study.

Eliminating some of the deterring impressions of the field and showing women that they can enjoy computer science and goes a long way in helping to spark interest, but a major obstacle in actually stimulating pursuit is the fact that women have nobody to look up to in the field. Role models are greatly absent; one blogger commented in a post titled “How to be a Woman Programmer” that by the time she reached the deeper rankings of her software company after a full 20 years of constantly swatting away crude sexism, she asked herself “where are all the other women?”, thinking that a plague must have killed off all females at her rank or higher within the company (Ullman, 2013, p. 1). Female role models in computer science are, to an extent, nonexistent.

Fortunately, a study conducted by Cozza (2011) found a potential solution that can abate the problem: e-mentoring opportunities for women can provide hugely effective and beneficial support to women currently pursuing or considering pursuing computer science. Organizations and initiatives have been founded for the purpose of increasing the percentages of women in science and technology fields, specifically through mentoring programs at the high school or pre-high school level (Cozza, 2011, p. 320), and Cozza (2011) also noted that the availability of either mentoring or e-mentoring opportunities affected the career decisions of female students by “reducing the motivation of girls to study technical/scientific subjects & pursue careers in the technological sector” (p. 323). Furthermore, the peer group in computer science perceived to be prevalent in the field lacks sizable female presence, which reinforces the masculine stereotype of the field, a trend also observed in Ullman’s blog article. It was found in the study that e-mentoring programs helped young women get past their concerns about joining technical fields and addressed the isolation that females would experience in engineering and computing disciplines by providing them with beneficial career advice (Cozza, 2011, p. 326). However, Cozza (2011) also remarked that e-mentoring opportunities could potentially go wrong, due to the slow development of strong mentor-mentee relationships, “miscommunication”, and “privacy/confidentiality” issues (p. 327). In the process of recruiting more women into computer science, it is absolutely essential to keep e-mentoring programs successful and effective, because if they go wrong, then the repercussions could actually push women away from the field. E-mentoring can indeed provide valuable career advice and support to women, but the potential disadvantages of mentoring must be especially avoided.

In an effort to make mentoring and e-mentoring programs as successful as possible for this very reason, J. Leck, C. Elliot, and B. Rockwell, researchers at University of Ottawa in Canada, thoroughly investigated the various repercussions and effects of mentoring programs. They especially focused on comparing traditional, in-person mentoring with e-mentoring, usually done through some form of online communication. The actual e-mentoring program that Leck, Elliot, and Rockwell (2012) focused on, conducted by Canadian Women in Technology, was concentrated toward providing “psycho-social and career development support to female mentees and developing trust” (p. 85). It was found through surveys with female participants in the e-mentoring program that many of the benefits of traditional mentoring, such as increased career development skills and self-confidence, are also found to be just as prevalent in e-mentoring (Leck, Elliot, & Rockwell, 2012, p. 90). An advantage with e-mentoring was the ease at which it could occur, since geographic limitations are removed when communication protocol is mainly electronic. But, less face-to-face contact caused the overall experience for the participants to be less personal.

Despite some advantages mentoring holds over e-mentoring, mentoring has some key pitfalls that render it less appropriate compared to e-mentoring, including scheduling limitations, a smaller mentor pool to pull from, and negative influence of demographic factors such as gender on the mentor-mentee relationship. The influence of demographics in the mentor-mentee relationship is the key to the success or failure of mentoring programs. In traditional mentoring, gender, age, ethnicity, social status, and other demographic factors can greatly impact the mentor-mentee relationship. Since there are so few women in the field to serve as mentors, cross-gender mentoring relationships are inevitable. However, Cozza (2012) found that “both male mentors and female mentees may be reluctant to enter into a cross-gender mentoring relationship in case it is misconstrued as a sexual advance or involvement” (p. 84). The results of the study found that e-mentoring, in the absence of a sufficient supply of female mentors, can subdue the negative effects of cross-gender mentor-mentee relationships. Overall, the advantages of e-mentoring and the pitfalls of traditional mentoring make e-mentoring a better option for providing social encouragement and better career perceptions for young women considering computer science.

Increasing female representation in computer science is essential to the success and quality of tomorrow’s workforce. Companies are trying to expand their workforce but failing because there is simply not enough talent to pull from in the employee pool. It has been shown through various studies that women are just as successful as men at grasping computer science and programming concepts, so recruiting the underrepresented demographic of women in computer science is an effective way to expand the workforce to include more talented individuals for the benefit of companies. Not only that, but a more diversified workplace in software development can help mitigate the biased perspectives that affect the work quality and scope in an almost singularly male-dominated profession. It is said that those who write the history books make history, and the internet and technology infrastructure of the 21st century is the single greatest recording construct of human history ever created. It’s important that we create it in such a way that in many years from now, people don’t look back on human civilization and think that it’s mostly comprised of white and Asian males.

Progress is being made, though. North Carolina State University recently announced that the freshman engineering class has the highest percentage of female students in university history, at 25% (Kulikowski, 2014, par. 1). While this is still fairly low, that fact that it is increasing over time is a good sign. Also, some high schools are implementing new engineering graduation requirements. The North Carolina School of Science & Mathematics in Durham North Carolina, for example, revised the graduation requirements in 2013 so that each student must take one class in the engineering department. While it’s not specifically a computer science requirement, the introductory computer science course has experienced a large increase in participation, contributing to the academic exposure of computer science and educating female high school students about the field. If all of the proposed solutions are implemented, a larger increase of women in computer science can be expected, and the gender gap will re-stabilize, creating a better-quality workforce and satisfying the high demand for computer science professionals that plagues the industry today.

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