Article Review 10

Women Losing Ground in IT, Computer Science

Article Summary:

This article discussed the disproportionately low percentage of women that are earning degrees in computer science compared to men. As a whole, the article pretty much consisted of paragraph after paragraph of statistics comparing the population of female students to the percentage of degrees conferred for a given field. Of all the statistics, it seemed that the most telling of them was that, in the 2005/2006 school year, proximately 60% of all college degrees went to women. In stark contrast, however, only 11% of the computer engineering degrees and only 15% of the computer science degrees went to women. There were also large discrepancies in the amount of degrees conferred to women in electrical engineering, aerospace engineering, physics, civil engineering, chemical engineering, biomedical engineering, and math. The lack of college degrees given to women in these fields has led to marked differences in the workplace population. Only 18% of college instructors in the computer sciences are women, and even though women hold 56% of professional positions in the United States workforce, they only hold 27% computer related positions.

Response to Article:

There were some really interesting statistics pointed out in this article. I had always figured that there were fewer women working in the field of computer science, but I did not know that the differences were so significant. However, I don't know if this is really an issue we should be worrying about. The article never mentions ways to rectify the disparities between the degrees conferred in computer science for men compared to women. I'm sure that if I did a simple search, I would also find plenty of articles telling us about the disproportionately low numbers of men who get degrees in English and education. Just because the two sexes are not represented equally in every degree program and workforce position doesn't mean there's a problem - at least to me. Due to the structure of our society, I think these differences will always exist, and I don't know if there's anything we can do about it.