Despite strong career prospects, computing education continues to suffer low student intakes and the rates for women are crazy low (Taulbee report). “Something is wrong with perceptions of computing” can be heard around the halls of every campus and computing conference. The truth may be that something is wrong with computing. There’s a report released today by ACM (pdf, press release) that goes some way to uncovering what lurks behind this image problem and that lurking something maybe the very nature of computing.
ACM and the WGBH Educational Foundation confirms a significant gender gap among US college-bound students in their opinions of computing as a possible college major or career. The report confirms what we already know, boys see computing as very good choice for study (74%) and career (67%), whereas girls don’t (32% and 26%).
What makes the interviews of 1,406 students interesting is that they went beyond these opening statistics.
They asked the students what was important in their career. Here the differences between the sexes become more apparent:
• While 64% of boys rated “being passionate about your job” as “extremely important,” 78% of the girls felt the same.
• Earning a high salary rated “extremely important” to 50% of all boys, but only 39% of all girls.
• And “having the power to do good and doing work that makes a difference” rated “extremely important” to 56% of the girls in comparison to 47% to the boys.
The authors correlated these two findings – to show the positive drivers towards computing: “having the power to create and discover new things” and “working in a cutting edge field”. Indeed these are the things we use to sell computing as a career. But look at the figure above – these two are way down the list of career preferences – indeed the least popular career element. We’re appealing to a tiny minority.
On the other side of the coin, what are things that young people what to do but go places other than computing to do them?
working with people in an interconnected, social, and innovative way;
having the power to do good and doing work that makes a difference in other people’s lives.
(note, they might also value other items, say “being passionate about your job”, but these are not related to whether they choose computing so while useful as generic institutional marketing, won’t have much effect on computing).
The respondents were also asked to rate some potential computing marketing statements. The traditional messages “computing gives you power”, and “computing opens doors” where favoured by boys, but a quite different message topped the female rankings:
Computing empowers you to do good.
With computing, you will be able to connect technology to your
community and make a world of difference–reducing energy
consumption, improving health care, enhancing security, reducing pollution, and advancing learning and education
This “making a world of difference” message is what would make a difference to computing intakes. It is not just about perception though, we also need to deliver an education that empowers graduates able to make a difference – and killing two birds with one stone – this would also mean computing could really make a postive difference to the world.
Computing for Sustainability 
dave
June 3, 2009
Interesting. I must have a look at the actual article.
I wonder how the boys discriminated between “find job interesting” and “be passionate about”. There could be some gender language bias going on there. The word “passionate”, linked with passion, might be loaded for some teenage boys.
I suspect that if we saw those boys engaging in something that they say is “interesting” to them, we might think “they’re actually quite passionate about that”.
blwirth
June 9, 2009
Being a female in the IT industry I can understand where these responses are coming from: I started in IT at age 19 after someone told me I “…picked up [advanced Excel] really fast – have you ever considered a career in computing?”
But after 5 years in IT I became disillusioned – I wasn’t “saving the planet”. This was exactly my thought at 24 years old and it correlates to the high response in ‘computing empowers you to do good’ above. So I undertook a Bachelor of Environmental Science part time over 6 years, thinking I would actually leave IT when I finished – but then Green IT came along and I found my niche.
That aside, one other thing I think is an influence on female’s perception of IT is the misconception you need to be a developer. Let me be clear upfront: I have absolutely nothing against developers!
However note the question above asked “how good a choice computer scientist/software designer would be as a career…”. The flaw in this question is that they asked about being a software developer.
To many girls this will not be appealing. I am frequently asked if I am a programmer by both IT and non-IT people. No. If the person who told me I picked up Excel really fast said to me “hey – have you ever considered becoming a visual basic programmer?” instead I don’t think I would have ever considered it (in fact my response would have been – “Snore! I couldn’t think of anything more boring!” – even with the limited knowledge I had about programming at that stage).
My point is: I don’t think there is something wrong with IT – I think there is something wrong with how we identify learning styles/skills and correlate them to jobs in IT for girls! Not every girl will be a developer because it doesn’t suit the way they learn. The reason I am an infrastructure person is because I am creative, visual & hands on learner.
My 2 cents…