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My experience in university CS and EE programs is this: schools are under enormous pressure to bring more women into tech, yet none of the "typical" techniques

My experience in university CS and EE programs is this: schools are under enormous pressure to bring more women into tech, yet none of the "typical" techniques for doing so seem to work. At my alma mater, the EE department could not attract any qualified female applicants in my year; they published flyers showing women in class, they sent female students to speak at high schools as representatives of the school, etc., but nothing seemed to work. Where I am now, we are told to use female pronouns in our lectures and research papers and to be as gender inclusive as possible, and professors struggle to find ways to make CS seem more interesting to people who did not spend their teenage years hacking; still, women remain a small minority in the CS and computer engineering programs. There is something happening here that is beyond what schools can do; somehow, high school girls are being convinced that technical fields are not something they can or should pursue.

sopooneo 14y ago
It seems to me plausible but not obvious or certain that the explanation could be found in high schools.
jiggy2011 14y ago
This was my experience too, when I did my CS degree the brochures etc made sure to prominently show female students and the testimonials were balanced to provide around the same amount of female quotes as male. The end result was still the same though, out of maybe ~90 students there were about 6 females at the start. By the end of the course I think only 2 remained, the numbers were slightly better for the "business computing" courses rather than the hardcore CS but not by much. There was roughly the same experience at the job fairs towards then end. The companies recruiting were desperate to talk to the female students about technical roles. Even so from what I'm aware most of the female students ended up taking non tech roles.
rbanffy 14y ago
Where I graduated, the brochures had a well balanced (and not a representation of our society) mix of genders and races, all beautiful, healthy people. Time has shown that real students were neither well distributed across gender and race, but also not pretty (and presented a much more diverse set of body shapes than the brochure would lead you to believe). As tests approached, they didn't look healthy either.

sopooneo 14y ago

It seems to me plausible but not obvious or certain that the explanation could be found in high schools.

jiggy2011 14y ago

This was my experience too, when I did my CS degree the brochures etc made sure to prominently show female students and the testimonials were balanced to provide around the same amount of female quotes as male. The end result was still the same though, out of maybe ~90 students there were about 6 females at the start. By the end of the course I think only 2 remained, the numbers were slightly better for the "business computing" courses rather than the hardcore CS but not by much. There was roughly the same experience at the job fairs towards then end. The companies recruiting were desperate to talk to the female students about technical roles. Even so from what I'm aware most of the female students ended up taking non tech roles.

rbanffy 14y ago

Where I graduated, the brochures had a well balanced (and not a representation of our society) mix of genders and races, all beautiful, healthy people. Time has shown that real students were neither well distributed across gender and race, but also not pretty (and presented a much more diverse set of body shapes than the brochure would lead you to believe). As tests approached, they didn't look healthy either.