Anyone who walks into an engineering class at any US college will immediately see the disproportionality of the men to women ratio.
This is the same for computer science and computer engineering classes. The difference between other engineering fields and that of computer science is that of the growth rate of jobs in computer science, or CS. It so far outnumbers the amount of future graduates that US companies are going to be forced to look internationally to fill open positions if we don’t do something right now:
“By 2020 U.S. Businesses will need 1.4 million computer scientists. At today’s graduation rate only 30% of those jobs will be filled by American-trained computer scientists.” – she++ The Documentary
If it weren’t for my nicely descriptive title, you might be trying to figure out what exactly we should do about this crisis, but if the title isn’t making it clear enough let me reiterate: we need to graduate more women with degrees in computer science and computer engineering. Without women in these fields we won’t be able to close this gap, both in field growth nor in disproportionate representation of women in engineering and tech.
Jocelen Goldfein a Director of Engineering at Facebook explains this solution very well:
“I think this is really a Rosie the Riveter moment, and that is that women are the great untapped bench. If you just look at the numbers, and they’re super simple, let’s say women are 60% of undergraduates, they’re 20% of computer science majors. Imagine a hypothetical computer science department with 100 students each year, at 20% women are 20 of those, men are 80 of those. If we simply took women to their appropriate proportion of undergraduates, which is 60% for every 40 men, there would be 60 women, for those 80 men, there would be 120 women. That would be 200 students, not 100. So if women were just represented proportionately we would double the number of software engineers this nation is making every year, and that would be timely because the number of jobs is tripling.”
Now you might be wondering what exactly is keeping women away from computer science and computer engineering.Allow me to explain. Women typically think differently than men do, this is why we’d be such a huge addition to the computer science community, we have unique problem solving skills that are different compared to men's.
As Wendy Li, a high school student who helped to create a unique app and is now very interested in computer science put it: “We have our own personal issues which are different from men and we need women computer scientists who can understand that issue and be able to code it and make it a reality.”
While this is a strength, it can also be one of our weaknesses when we first begin computer science. Women frequently doubt themselves more than men, and when constantly surrounded by men who appear to know more about what they’re doing, it further impacts our confidence levels regarding our skills and learning abilities.
Kimber Lockhart, Director of Engineering at Box describes her experiences when she first became a computer science student: “I was terrified to take the computer science introductory class…The expectation was if you’re studying computer science you must have used this before. I spent a lot of time thinking that, you know that, I just wasn’t qualified for this, I hadn’t been coding since I was 12, and my classmates, several of them had.”
These experiences are not just flukes. I myself have experienced feelings of doubt, insecurity, lack of skill, and intimidation while studying computer science. Many other women in computer science that many would consider successful have experienced similar feelings to these. One of them is Tracy Chou a Software Engineer at Pinterest who describes how she felt while taking her first CS course in college: “It’s known by some as a weeder class, so it was a little bit more difficult…I thought I was failing that class the entire way through.”
After reading all the negatives of being a woman in computer science you might be questioning why any woman would choose to be a computer scientist at all. We do it because something about it catches us. We fall in love with the problem solving, the ability to create new things that can improve entire systems, or people’s daily life. We want to help people, be creative, and improve things, and you can do all of that and so much more by becoming a computer scientist or computer engineer.
If you crave solving problems and finding solutions, if you're creative, if you like math and science, if you're a woman or girl who's been told you can’t do any of those things because you’re a woman or a girl, try computer science.
Sandy Jen, Co-Founder & CTO of Meebo and Software Engineer at Google explains how anyone can start learning to code: “You don’t have to be the most genius person in the world to even get started. I think just being able to be ok and persevere and say I’m learning something.”
If you get stuck or you start to doubt yourself listen to what Jocelen Goldfein said when asked what advice she had to give: “Fake it til you make it. If you project self confidence the people around you will believe in you and someday you will look around you and realize you’re not faking it anymore.”
