A blueprint for getting more women into information technology

The good news is that correcting the cultural, institutional and unconscious biases that push grils away from information technology is not all that difficult. A blueprint for doing so was drawn up by Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College, a small science and engineering powerhouse in Claremont (CA). Dr Klawe raised the percentage of women graduating in computer science from less than 15% in 2006 to 55% in 2016, primarily by removing intimidation in the classroom, and abolishing all notions about some people being good at computer science and others not. Overall, Dr Klawe has seven tips for getting more women into IT, including early internships and hiring lots of female faculty members as mentors and role models. The incoming White House could do much to bridge the widening gap in America’s IT workforce by embracing the Harvey Mudd model. In particular, as a way of getting more computer-science teachers into high schools across the country, it would be a far more “innovative approach to training” than anything tried so far.