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Women, Work and the Academy > Executive Summaries > Ellen Spertus
What We Can Learn from Computer Science's Differences from other Sciences
Ellen Spertus
Like many fields with "science" in their name, computer science isn't
really a science. In many ways, it has more in common with engineering.
Both qualitatively and quantitatively, it is different from any other
science or engineering field. In most of the disciplines discussed at
the workshop, the percentage of female students has been increasing,
while the percentage of female faculty has not. In computer science,
the reverse is true. This paper reviews the data and suggests some
possible theories.
Decline of women earning bachelor's degrees
As Figure 1 shows, the percentage of bachelor's degrees in computer
science going to women has been consistently lower than in other
scientific fields and higher than in engineering [NSF 2004]. The peak
occurred in 1984, when 37% of computer science bachelor's degrees went
to women. While other fields of science and engineering have increased
or at least maintained their female bachelor's degree production since
1984, computer science showed a marked decline. In 2000 (the most
recent year for which data is available), 28% of bachelor's degrees in
computer science went to women, a decline of nearly one-third from the
1984 peak. Women's under-representation is even greater at top
engineering schools, such as MIT, where computer science had the
smallest proportion of women for any undergraduate program, including
those in engineering [MIT 1995].
There are many theories as to why women's participation in computer
science has declined since 1984 [Gürer & Camp 2002]. One theory is
the rise of the personal computer. Before 1980, few people had access
to computers at home or in K-12 schools. Thus, young men and women were
equally inexperienced with computers when they entered college. Since
1980, computers have become common in (some) schools and homes, where
they are disproportionately used by boys, giving them an advantage in
introductory college computer science courses [Gürer & Camp 2002,
Margolis & Fisher 2001].
Another factor is "The College of Engineering effect", in which the
percentage of female students decreased as computer science departments
were moved from science to engineering divisions [Camp 1997], consistent
with Figure 1 above. Similarly, in the public's mind, computer science,
more than any other academic discipline, became associated with
antisocial male misfits [Gürer & Camp 2002, Margolis & Fisher
2001].
Increase in female PhDs and faculty
Just as the "pipeline" metaphor does not describe women's
participation in the other sciences (with increasing degrees failing to
lead to increasing faculty), it fails in computer science, although in a
happier way. While women's undergraduate enrollment has decreased or
stagnated, the percentage of women earning PhDs and joining the
faculties of research universities has increased.
Figure 2 [CRA 2005] shows the percentage of computer science degrees
awarded to women at the bachelor's, master's, and PhD levels. For
decades, the higher the degree, the fewer women; however, since 1997, a
greater proportion of master's degrees than bachelor's degrees were
awarded to women. Observe too that PhD representation has been rising
consistently, if unevenly, over time.
Figure 3 shows the increase in tenured and tenure-track faculty in
PhD-granting computer science and computer engineering departments in
the United States and Canada.
Why did women make gains at the faculty levels after and while losing
ground at the undergraduate levels? In the following section, I offer
some preliminary speculations.
The "Tech Boom" hypothesis
There was a peak in PhD (Figure 2) and faculty (Figure 3)
representation during the mid-nineties, when the Internet boom took
place, during which some graduate students and faculty temporarily or
permanently left academia for industry. Perhaps male computer
scientists were more likely than their female peers to seek greener
pastures. On a personal note, I completed my dissertation on Internet
search during this period. I saw many of my male peers work at or found
start-ups, either instead of or while completing graduate school. (I
did not have enough female peers to be able to comment on them.) When I
looked for a faculty position in 1997, there were many more jobs
available than people to fill them, both because departments were
growing and because existing and potential faculty were choosing
industry instead. The improved academic environment
hypothesis
During the same period that female undergraduate enrollment was
increasing, female computer scientists and their male allies were
aggressive in improving the environment for female graduate students and
faculty. The watershed event occurred in the early 1980s, when female
MIT graduate students and research staff got together, shared their
experiences, and wrote a highly influential report, entitled "Barriers
to Equality in Academia: Women in Computer Science at MIT" [MIT 1983],
which is still being discussed more than twenty years later (see, for
example, http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/lazowska/mit/). On another
personal note, this report, shown to me when I started doing computer
science research at MIT, was a major factor in improving my view of
women as computer scientists, as it demonstrated that their unequal
representation did not arise on a level playing field, as I had
presumed.
Another watershed event was Anita Borg's founding of the "Systers"
email list [Systers 1993]. It began in the women's bathroom of an
operating-systems conference in 1987 where the few female attendees met
and recognized the benefits of forming an online community, and now has
more than 2000 members. Otherwise isolated women could get practical
information, such as how to manage a "two-body" job search (in which a
woman and her partner were both seeking academic jobs) or issues in the
timing of motherhood. I found Systers valuable not just for practical
information (such as what to wear when presenting a paper at my first
conference, a topic on which my otherwise excellent male advisor was
useless), but for changing my perception of female computer scientists
(and myself) from anomalous freak to abundant community. It also
greatly influenced a report I wrote, entitled "Why Are There So Few
Female Computer Scientists" [Spertus 1991].
Another major player has been The Computing Research Association
(http://www.cra.org) and its Committee on the Status of Women in
Computing Research (http://www.cra.org/Activities/craw/index.php), which
have led many excellent programs, such as the Distributed Mentor
Program, which provides undergraduate women with summer research
opportunities helpful for preparing themselves for graduate school, and
offers highly effective career workshops to graduate students and
faculty. (The Computing Research Association is the source for much of
the data [CRA 2004, CRA 2005] and one of the papers [Borg 1993] I cite.)
Conclusions
Just as increasing female undergraduate degree production in other
fields does not guarantee increases in the professoriate, declining
undergraduate enrollment does not preclude growth at the PhD and faculty
levels. While computer science continues to struggle with its failure
at attracting and retaining undergraduate women, its successes at later
stages should be understood and replicated in other scientific and
engineering fields where possible.
References
[Borg 1993]
Borg, Anita. Why Systers?
Computing Research News, September 1993. Available online in its
original form at http://www.cra.org/CRN/issues/9304.pdf and
updated at http://athena.systers.org/about.html.
[Camp 1987]
Camp, Tracy. The Incredible
Shrinking Pipeline. Communications of the ACM, vol. 40, no. 10,
pp. 103-110, Oct. 1997. An expanded version is available online at
http://www.mines.edu/fs_home/tcamp/cacm/paper.html.
[CRA 2004]
Computing Research Association. CRA
Taulbee Trends: Women Students & Faculty, May 6, 2004. Available online
at http://www.cra.org/info/taulbee/women.html.
[CRA 2005]
Computing Research Association.
Women Among All Degrees Granted, 2005. Available online at
http://www.cra.org/info/education/us/women.html.
[Gürer and Camp 2002]
Gürer, Denise
and Camp, Tracy. Investigating the Incredible Shrinking Pipeline for
Women in Computer Science: Final Report - NSF Project 9812016, 2002.
Available online at http://women.acm.org/documents/finalreport.pdf.
[Margolis and Fisher 2001]
Margolis, Jane and
Fisher, Allan. Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing. MIT
Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001.
[MIT 1983]
Female graduate students and research
staff in the Laboratory for Computer Science and the Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. Barriers to Equality in Academia: Women
in Computer Science at MIT, February 1983. Available online at
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/lazowska/mit/Contents.pdf
[MIT 1995]
MIT EECS Ad Hoc Committee on Women
Undergraduate Enrollment. Women Undergraduate Enrollment in Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, February 17, 1995. Available
online at
http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~hal/women-enrollment-comm/final-report.html.
[NSF 2004]
Science & Engineering
Indicators - 2004 (NSB 04-1), National Science Foundation, May 2004.
Derived from data in Appendix Table 2-22. Available online at
http://nsf.gov/sbe/srs/seind04/start.htm.
[Spertus 1991]
Spertus, Ellen. Why Are There So
Few Female Computer Scientists? MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab
Technical Report 1315, August 1991. Available online at
http://www.mills.edu/ACAD_INFO/MCS/SPERTUS/Gender/why.html.
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