Cyber View: Access Denied; August 1998; Scientific American Magazine; by Grossman; 1 Page(s)

With all the advances toward equality for women, you¿ve got to assume there are lots of women programmers, right? After all, it¿s not as though computer science is a discipline that requires more brawn than brains. But no: according to statistics compiled by Tracy K. Camp, then an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Alabama, the number of undergraduate degrees in computer science that is awarded to women has been shrinking steadily, both in real numbers and as a percentage of degrees awarded.

For instance, in the academic year 1980-81, women obtained 32.5 percent of the bachelor¿s degrees in computer science; the figure for 1993-94 was 28.4 percent, a drop of 12.6 percent. Calculated from the peak year in 1983-84, when 37.1 percent of the degrees went to women (representing 32,172 B.A. and B.S. degrees), the total decline is an alarming 23.5 percent.