Women computer science grads: Raw numbers went up as percentages went down
October 20, 2014 at 8:25 am 2 comments
Fascinating analysis! It turns out that the number of women getting degrees in CS actually rose in the early 2000’s, but the percentage shared dropped because so many men women were taking CS, too.
Here’s the number of women getting CS degrees:
Here’s the percentage view:
The gains by women actually weren’t keeping up with the overall increase in the population of CS grads. More men were filling those seats than women. As a share of all CS bachelor’s degrees granted that year, females had slipped almost 10 points, from 37% in 1984/1985 to 27% in 2003. The overall trendline was clearly downward, as seen below.
via Women computer science grads: The bump before the decline | Computerworld.
Entry filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: BPC, NCWIT, women in computing.
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Computing Ed Research - Guzdial's Take 
1.
Alisha | October 21, 2014 at 1:20 pm
Actually decomposing the percentages of women in engineering into number of women shows that some of the gains in % came from small gains in number of women and larger declines in number of men. Shows that one graph can not tell the whole story.
2.
Mark Guzdial | October 21, 2014 at 1:40 pm
Engineering? Are you talking about CS distinct from Engineering, or using Engineering as a superset of CS?