What do women want?

Recently New York Times columnist Randall Stross asked, “What has driven women out of computer science?” (NYTimes, 11/16/2008, p. BU4). It might have been news to some readers that women have been “driven” out of computer science or have spurned the discipline and careers as programmers, but to bolster his case, Stross provided some data -- at research universities like Rutgers and MIT, women undergraduates majoring in computer science in the US and Canada averaged 12% of total CS majors in 2006-2007, down from 19% in 2001-2002, with some computer science departments reporting that their female students comprise fewer than 10% of the total majors.

These data are familiar to those of us who have been tracking women’s interest in the STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) fields. And it’s not just computer science that has lost women’s interest; all information technology-related fields have considerably less participation by women than in other disciplines. For example, athough the percentages of women in fields such as medicine and law have approached or exceeded 50% of total students, numbers in IT-related majors have gone down. This is true even at SCILS – when we began the Information Technology and Informatics degree in 2001, we had 45% women and 55% men in the academic major. That number decreased to 27% in 2007-2008, and in some semesters the number of women is even lower. Why?

What is it about IT and Computer Science that drives the number of women down? Randall Stross posed that question to men and women professors in Computer Science and in Management and Computer Systems. Here are some of the answers that came back:

-         The male Comp Sci culture has developed more deeply since the 1990’s, and like the comics culture or video game hobbyists, it often appears to be a male-only clubhouse.

-         Video and computer games gained a reputation early on as ‘boys toys,’ and whether that is true or not now, the perception is still there among men and women.

-         Women have entered allied fields of work such as data entry, Web updating or in jobs where they use spreadsheets and word processing which seems like they are using technology tools, but they are not developing or designing them.

-         Women don’t want to be lumped into categories such as ‘nerd’ or ‘geek,’ and they don’t want to enter a field where they perceive the fact that they can’t take time out to have children or tend to family matters such as caring for an elderly parent.

So, does it really matter that girls and women don’t want to enter computer science? Yes, it does, because in a time of layoffs and high unemployment, there is still a  demand for information technology workers. The pay is much higher than average, and there are opportunities for satisfying careers where creativity and innovation can thrive. And many IT professionals believe that software, game, and program development would be better served by having both men and women in the design stage; the sensibilities and strengths of both genders would then be brought to the final products.

 What do women really want that would bring them back into Computer Science (CS)and Information Technology (IT) majors in universities and careers in the workplace? In studies completed here at Rutgers and across the country, women articulate the need to have meaningful professions that help people, that help the natural environment, that keep people and animals well and healthy, in other words those helping professions that make the world a better place. The recent increase in the percentages of high-achieving women in such fields as veterinary science point to the fact that women wish to be in a helping and nurturing role.

The fact that professors and workforce professionals in IT, IS (Information Systems) and CS haven’t shown young men and women how computing can contribute to preserving the planet, to health and wellness, and to helping children is a failing for which we should take responsibility. New efforts to recruit women into IT and related fields could do well to listen to what women say they want, and work with mentors, parents, high school teachers and counselors to present IT in light of human needs and societal demands. This is a much more positive path than trying to dispel geekdom images and the nerdy aura that pervade the tech fields today.