In the early 1980s, computer science had one of the highest proportions of female undergraduates in science and engineering, and the number of women receiving the bachelor’s degrees in the field had been increasing at an exponential rate from 1970 to 1985. 1985 was the peak year where women received about 38 percent of the field’s bachelor’s degrees in the United States. It had become one of the least gender-balanced fields in American society, especially in 2003, when the percentage of women receiving the bachelor’s degrees was only about 28 percent. On the other hand, the men’s figure in receiving bachelor’s degrees had gone up from approximately 63 to 72 percent. This figure shows that the gender gap in getting bachelor’s degrees in computer science is getting wider, and we can think that popularity of computer science as a career or a field has been decreasing for women.
On the other hand, in the case of master’s degrees, it is different from bachelor’s degrees. The gender gap in getting degrees is narrower than the bachelor’s degree. The noticeable thing is that the amount of women granted master’s degrees has been rising at a linear rate until now. More and more women are getting their master’s degrees in computer science.
In the case of doctorate degrees, the number of men who were granted doctorates rose exponentially from 1985 to 1995. But the women’s figure was completely different. Although the figure goes up and down, like the master’s degrees in computer science, the figure of women getting doctorates has increased steadily on the whole.
The gender gap in
the undergraduate field is getting wider and wider. It
seems that obstacles to women’s participation in the field of computer
science seem to stem from something
inherent in the field. Computer game is introduced to boys at a young age,
while most girls are not interested in
computer games. As children grow, the computer industry consists of
male-targeted computer games. Eventually, most men pursue computer science because
they are familiar with computers since they were a child, while most women don’t become interested in the field of
computer science.
Clearly there will be a tendency toward male-dominance in the field. But the above graph shows that the gender gap in getting degrees in computer science is getting narrower with the pursuit of a more advanced degree. In this case, while computer science is not an attractive field for women before pursuing an undergraduate degree, if women participate in the field of computer science, the interest of computer science would grow, narrowing the gender gap in getting degrees in computer science.
