Communications of the ACM
How to Fix the Gender Gap in Technology
Tech leaders and educators are trying to find ways to interest young women in STEM fields and computer science.
Credit: Monika Wisniewska / iStockphoto.com
Women currently hold 27 percent of all computer science jobs, down from 30 percent 10 years ago, and they account for just 20 percent of undergraduate computer science majors, compared with 36 percent in 1986.
The tech gap begins at home, where boys get their first computers and video games at a younger age than girls and are more likely to play with toys that build spatial reasoning skills, writes Dana Goldstein. She says the disparity puts women at a disadvantage in the workforce, since over the past decade three times as many jobs have been created in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields than in non-STEM fields, and STEM workers have been much less likely to experience unemployment.
Meanwhile, women who work in STEM earn more than other female workers. However, if American women cannot meet the growing demand, Goldstein says foreign competitors, such as Brazil, India, and Malaysia, will.
Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg encourages parents to let their daughters play video games. Although 94 percent of girls play some kind of video games, compared with 99 percent of boys, boys are still much more likely to explore how the video games work.
From Slate
View Full Article
Abstracts Copyright © 2012 Information Inc. 
, Bethesda, Maryland, USA
No entries found