Women in computing: where are we now?

Reviewer: David E. Ross

The authors begin with a description of the sexism that discourages girls in high school from preparing for college majors in physical science and engineering, from enrolling in such majors when they reach college, and (among those women who actually enroll in such majors) from completing bachelor's degrees in these majors. Similar problems for women are described for master's and doctoral programs, which reduce the population of women pursuing technical careers. On the other hand, the authors admit that the proportion of women researchers in industry and academia is increasing. The paper concludes with suggestions for support activities designed to end sexist attitudes and encourage women to seek careers in computer science; a sidebar describes some actual activities that have occurred or are being planned. This paper contributes little new knowledge of the problem of sexism in physical sciences and engineering in academic environments, which is known throughout all such disciplines and not confined to computing. As a practicing software engineer, I was disappointed that a paper with such a general title did not address my career's aspects of computing (a gap filled by other papers in this issue of Communications of the ACM ). Instead, it concentrated on the academic aspect of computing—learning, teaching, and research. Rather than depending on a different paper with an equally narrow focus, I would have preferred a comparison of how sexism affects women in teaching and research careers versus how it affects women with practicing careers (software engineering, development, testing, and so on). As someone who has supervised, worked with, and been supervised by women, I suspect the latter aspect of computing might show a different picture.