Women in Computer Science

As a woman in Computer Science, it is easy to become discouraged or intimidated by the major because of the lack of other females in your courses. Below are some sources as to why the ration of men to women in this field is so low.

 

Video:

This video was created by PBS and is about the history of women in the field of computer science. PBS is a non-profit organization that broadcasts over multiple platforms, is nationally well-known, and trusted. This can be a good thing and a bad thing. This video is a good source of information in general, but doesn’t list their resources.

Professional Organization Website:

Girls Who Code is an organization that has been built up in the last few years. Their goal is to build “the largest pipeline of future female engineers”. This is a trusted source because they are a global organization that is being represented in many schools around the globe. A disadvantage is they don’t source their resources for their stats.

News Article: 

This news article was written by Randall Stross at The New York Times. This article is about different studies and their results about what could possibly be driving women out of computer science. This article links all its sources and mentions multiple studies. Randall Stross has multiple publications of books and articles in the technology field as well as being employed by the nationally known New York Times company.

Academic Journal:

IEEE is a company that publishes magazines with topics that relate to technology and society. This specific article was written by S.Beyer, who works in the dept. of computer science at Wisconsin Univ., et al and is about Deterrents to Women Taking Computer Science Courses. This article is trustworthy because they cite all their resources and other studies they used, it also was found on Google Scholar.

Experts in the Topic:

This article is about strategies to include women in computer science and was written by Vivian Lagesen. This author has multiple articles published about gender and technology. This was published in the journal Social Studies of Science in 2007. She is an expert in the topic because she obviously has studied this subject, as seen by her vast amounts of work published, and she herself is a female in the technology field.