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Women's Enrollment In Computer Science Correlates Negatively With Net Access

New submitter MoriT sends this excerpt from a post examining the correlation between women's enrollment in computer science programs at college and their access to the internet. "There is currently a responsibility-dodging contest between industry and academia over who is to blame for the declining enrollment of women in Computer Science and declining employment of women in software development. I hear people in industry bemoan the 'empty pipeline,' while academics maintain that women aren't entering their programs because of perceptions of the industry. I have compiled some data that may help resolve the question by highlighting a third factor common to both: access to an Internet-based culture of computing. ... I conclude that in the last 10 years among many Northern European nations, rising Internet access is correlated with falling interest in computer science relative to other professions among women. The group of Mediterranean nations that show a positive correlation should be a fruitful area for future research, but seem outliers from the Northern cohort."

2 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Have you asked them? by geekoid · · Score: 2, Informative

    And that kind og joke is why women don't go into the field.

    OTOH, you think women are your's for the herding, so I shouldn't expect you to be civil.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  2. Re:This is hardly specific to computer science... by MoriT · · Score: 3, Informative

    Women earn 45.5% of Mathematics degrees in the US. Engineering and Physics are only at around 25%, but they have been trending consistently upward. Computer Science, on the other hand, has declined from 38% to 25%. It is the only field with that dramatic decline.