Bringing Women and Minorities to IT

The failure of educational institutions to realize and acknowledge differences between the minds of men and women could be part of the reason that finding a woman in a computer science class can be like finding a parking space at the mall.

Women earn 57 percent of all undergraduate degrees in the country, and 52 percent of all math and science undergraduate degrees. But in computer and information science, women represent only 18 percent of all undergraduate degrees. And the trend starts early: Females constitute 56 percent of all high school Advanced Placement (AP) test-takers, but represent only 19 percent of AP computer science test-takers. There’s growing evidence that this gender gap is hurting the nation’s economy. The US Department of Labor estimates that between 2010 and 2020, there will be more than 1.4 million computing-related job openings nationally, but at current graduation rates, only 30 percent of those positions can be filled. While opinions may differ on how to lure more students into scientific, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields, limiting the country’s talent pool by failing to address this lack of diversity is a poor strategy for success in a competitive global market.