Why the Widening Gender Gap In Computer Science?

ruheling writes "From yesterday's New York Times: ' What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science?' In many US universities, over the past decade, there has been deliberate effort to integrate and encourage women and girls to get more involved in the 'hard' sciences, engineering, and math. However, instead of the proportion of women to men increasing, in Computer Science the opposite is actually true. Specifically, in 2001-2, only 28 percent of all undergraduate degrees in computer science went to women. Now many computer science departments report that women now make up less than 10 percent of the newest undergraduates. What's going on here, folks?"

Comments

Re:Obvious....

[theaveng]

>>>You're a misogynistic putz

On the contrary, I love women a great deal. As often as possible (if they allow me). But one thing I will never do is insult them ("putz"), because I'm more mature than that. YOU might want to try being more mature too instead of being a misandrist.

STRAWMAN ARGUMENT:

I never said women are "only" interested in pink-collar fields... please stop putting words into my mouth I did not say. I said that when you peer into the Health & Human Development classes, they are dominated by 80-90% women. And similarly engineering is dominated by 80-90% men. At no time did I use the term "only". It does not apply to either major.

Instead I'd like an answer of why the HHD major only has ~10% men. Are men being suppressed by the female gender? Or is there some other mechanism at work? I suspect it's lack of interest by men in that career; similarly I suspect there's a general lack of interest by women in engineering. Making this observation does NOT make me a misogynist.