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I have always wondered: People often point to graphs showing a massive decline in the percentage of women in CS in the 80's. But has anyone seen a graph of the

I have always wondered: People often point to graphs showing a massive decline in the percentage of women in CS in the 80's. But has anyone seen a graph of the absolute number, not percentages? If 1 million women were coding, then 100 billion men started coding, those 1M women would still be coders. So there wasn't necessarily a decline. Or maybe there was, and the numbers will reflect that. I am interested in the actual numbers, not graphs or interpretations. But I've never found a data source, so hopefully someone knows of one. The whole debate is interesting because there are at least four separate sides: men who don't believe it exists, men who recognize it as a systemic problem, women who believe it's the most important aspect, and women who wish the debate would go away so they can focus on doing good work instead of on doing good work as a woman. Me, I don't know enough about it. I'm just curious about the numbers over time. And if I have a daughter hopefully I'll think of some crafty way to make programming seem interesting. The one badass female dev I know said she regretted not getting into it from a younger age, so it seems worth fixing.

LogicalBorg 9y ago
This may be what you're looking for: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp According to that table, women's bachelor's degrees in computer science: * were low in the 1970's, about 15% average * were higher in the 1980's, about 35% average * declined in the 1990's to about 25-30% * steadily declined from 27 to 17% in the 2000's
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  Thank you. Perfect. Now I feel like we're in a position to have a productive debate. For example, there was a sharp decline in the rate of bachelor's degrees for women, but not master's degrees. Those remained nearly the same, then declined at the same rate as men's. It's interesting to see the actual numbers because it clearly shows there is/was a problem. Now, how best to solve it? One issue with quotas is that the rate of women graduates can't necessarily keep up. It seems like we could use an influx of new students (in addition to the current efforts).
- danielvf 9y ago
  There are now 60 women graduating for every 40 men who do so (in the US). There has also been huge growth in the number of overall graduates. To find absolute numbers you need to adjust your percentages by these factors. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_320.20.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_320.20.a...
mdorazio 9y ago
This has been my question as well, and few people want to consider it. The best data I've been able to find on actual gender split over that period only goes through 1996 [1] - just when the dotcom bubble was getting going. However, if you look at total CS degrees (look under "The third surge" in [2]) it at least seems pretty obvious what happened. Right around 1980 the number of CS degree students exploded, with men consistently outnumbering women about 2 to 1. Then around 1985 the absolute number gap started widening rapidly and never got better. We should definitely consider that women may have been discouraged from entering CS degree programs more than they were in the 70s, but at least in statistical terms, it seems like men just got more interested in the field for a variety of reasons and naturally came to massively outnumber the women interested in the field. Also see [3] since the new CS men had to come at the expense of other majors, and it's interesting to look at what they chose not to pursue (note: the stats are complicated by the fact that women represent an increasingly large overall percentage of college students over the same time period). Men seem to have declined as a % of graduates over the 80s-90s period most strongly in non-CS Engineering, physical sciences, and biology. This paints a really interesting picture since it's hard to argue a systemic push against women in science degrees when CS is pretty much the only one with an increasing gender imbalance issue over the same period. [1] http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/cs181/projects/women-in-cs/statistics.html http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/cs181/project... [2] https://www.geekwire.com/2014/analysis-examining-computer-science-education-explosion/ https://www.geekwire.com/2014/analysis-examining-computer-sc... [3] https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2013/11/23/supporting-material/ https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2013/11/23/supporting...
- abalone 9y ago
  > it seems like men just got more interested in the field for a variety of reasons and naturally came to massively outnumber the women... it's hard to argue a systemic push against women in science degrees when CS is pretty much the only one with an increasing gender imbalance This is a bad premise. What sets CS apart from most sciences, and correlates perfectly with the 80s, is that it became a professional path to vast wealth (the rise of software giants like Microsoft). This supports the article which details some of the mechanisms by which the composition of CS was engineered to shift from women to men through a series of professional and cultural obstacles, once it was clear that software would be a high-paying career.
youzicha 9y ago
https://youzicha.tumblr.com/post/129386003779/relative-and-absolute-numbers-of-women-in-cs https://youzicha.tumblr.com/post/129386003779/relative-and-a... Someone else also pointed out that the U.S. population has increased by about 20% since the 1980s, so although the absolute number of women CS students are about the same, that still means it's proportionally going down.
chrismcb 9y ago
But the percentages are very important. In your example you if 1M women were coding then 100B more men started, but there are still 1M women, there isn't a decline... But there is.(Couldn't you have used more realistic numbers?) if a lot of new men entered the field, but there was not a similar increase in women, then there is a problem, why did the number of men to up, and not the numbers of women? As long as the distribution doesn't match the population, within reason, the is an issue. That is why the actual numbers don't matter, but the percentages do. Women make up roughly half the population, but less than 20% in the computer industry. Why is there such a discrepancy?

LogicalBorg 9y ago

This may be what you're looking for: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp According to that table, women's bachelor's degrees in computer science: * were low in the 1970's, about 15% average * were higher in the 1980's, about 35% average * declined in the 1990's to about 25-30% * steadily declined from 27 to 17% in the 2000's

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sillysaurus3 9y ago
Thank you. Perfect. Now I feel like we're in a position to have a productive debate. For example, there was a sharp decline in the rate of bachelor's degrees for women, but not master's degrees. Those remained nearly the same, then declined at the same rate as men's. It's interesting to see the actual numbers because it clearly shows there is/was a problem. Now, how best to solve it? One issue with quotas is that the rate of women graduates can't necessarily keep up. It seems like we could use an influx of new students (in addition to the current efforts).
danielvf 9y ago
There are now 60 women graduating for every 40 men who do so (in the US). There has also been huge growth in the number of overall graduates. To find absolute numbers you need to adjust your percentages by these factors. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_320.20.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_320.20.a...

mdorazio 9y ago

This has been my question as well, and few people want to consider it. The best data I've been able to find on actual gender split over that period only goes through 1996 [1] - just when the dotcom bubble was getting going. However, if you look at total CS degrees (look under "The third surge" in [2]) it at least seems pretty obvious what happened. Right around 1980 the number of CS degree students exploded, with men consistently outnumbering women about 2 to 1. Then around 1985 the absolute number gap started widening rapidly and never got better. We should definitely consider that women may have been discouraged from entering CS degree programs more than they were in the 70s, but at least in statistical terms, it seems like men just got more interested in the field for a variety of reasons and naturally came to massively outnumber the women interested in the field. Also see [3] since the new CS men had to come at the expense of other majors, and it's interesting to look at what they chose not to pursue (note: the stats are complicated by the fact that women represent an increasingly large overall percentage of college students over the same time period). Men seem to have declined as a % of graduates over the 80s-90s period most strongly in non-CS Engineering, physical sciences, and biology. This paints a really interesting picture since it's hard to argue a systemic push against women in science degrees when CS is pretty much the only one with an increasing gender imbalance issue over the same period. [1] http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/cs181/projects/women-in-cs/statistics.html http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/cs181/project... [2] https://www.geekwire.com/2014/analysis-examining-computer-science-education-explosion/ https://www.geekwire.com/2014/analysis-examining-computer-sc... [3] https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2013/11/23/supporting-material/ https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2013/11/23/supporting...

abalone 9y ago
> it seems like men just got more interested in the field for a variety of reasons and naturally came to massively outnumber the women... it's hard to argue a systemic push against women in science degrees when CS is pretty much the only one with an increasing gender imbalance This is a bad premise. What sets CS apart from most sciences, and correlates perfectly with the 80s, is that it became a professional path to vast wealth (the rise of software giants like Microsoft). This supports the article which details some of the mechanisms by which the composition of CS was engineered to shift from women to men through a series of professional and cultural obstacles, once it was clear that software would be a high-paying career.

youzicha 9y ago

https://youzicha.tumblr.com/post/129386003779/relative-and-absolute-numbers-of-women-in-cs https://youzicha.tumblr.com/post/129386003779/relative-and-a... Someone else also pointed out that the U.S. population has increased by about 20% since the 1980s, so although the absolute number of women CS students are about the same, that still means it's proportionally going down.

chrismcb 9y ago

But the percentages are very important. In your example you if 1M women were coding then 100B more men started, but there are still 1M women, there isn't a decline... But there is.(Couldn't you have used more realistic numbers?) if a lot of new men entered the field, but there was not a similar increase in women, then there is a problem, why did the number of men to up, and not the numbers of women? As long as the distribution doesn't match the population, within reason, the is an issue. That is why the actual numbers don't matter, but the percentages do. Women make up roughly half the population, but less than 20% in the computer industry. Why is there such a discrepancy?