One woman's view of life as a member of an endangered species :-

The female Computer Science undergraduate.

When I decided on Computer Science as my chosen degree discipline, it went without saying that I'd be entering a course where men far, far outnumbered women. Having spent the previous seven years in an all girl school this wasn't an entirely unappealing prospect. It has to be said images of spending four years in lecture halls surrounded by pale, photophobic potbellied stick men who mumbled out of the side of their mouths while staring at their shoes on the rare occasions they spoke did creep into my mind now and again but being an open minded modern woman, I dismissed these as myth….. because I'd spent seven years in an all girl school and had my own ideas about the sort of men that I wanted to spend four university years with.

Now, this isn't to say the male female ratio on computing courses was my primary reason for choosing one. Let's just call it a happy coincidence. The reality of the situation is that although information technology is becoming a more "acceptable" industry for women to work in, the number of women entering higher education to study computer related disciplines is declining steadily and has been since the early 1980s. Hold tight, here comes the statistical bit but I'll make it brief. Even though the number of students commencing computing courses each year continues to grow, the number of female entries is falling. In the late 1970s, a quarter of all computing degrees in the UK were awarded to women where as these days only around 12-15% go to females. I should point out that the actual numbers of female computing graduates per year is declining, not just the percentage.

I walked into my very first computer science lecture fully expecting to be in the minority but I never anticipated just how much in the minority I was actually going to be. I believe that at the beginning of my first year, around 15 of 150 or so undergraduates on the straight computer science degree were female. That was a little intimidating to say the least but at least there weren't too many pale, photophobic potbellied stick men about. Now, half way through the second year I struggle to think of 5 other girls who've made it this far on the CS (computer science) course. The rest just faded away throughout the first year including one young, exceedingly tall, blonde and shapely girl from Sweden whose disappearance was mourned by the lads for months afterwards. Of course many of the guys also left, I just happened to notice the female proportion dropping most obviously.

The drop out rate among girls (in my experience, not from statistics) is fairly high and the main culprit for this is that the few girls who do make it onto a CS degree or the like are on the wrong course and never intend to take up an industry job. Teaching seems to be a common goal for many of them with the degree just a means to an end so they can enter postgraduate teaching degrees. Two comp sci women I know rather better than the rest are without a doubt on the wrong course. They have no interest in programming, which lies at the core of a CS degree and indeed don't seem particularly interested in anything technical at all. It seems women fall into computing degrees as the last resort, rather than because of a burning passion for technology.

Admittedly, I fit the bill there. My childhood dream, and what I set about bringing to fruition in my later years at school, was to study veterinary medicine at university. Consequently I went down the sciences route and only took Computing because it fit into my timetable and seemed a better choice than the other subjects I could've taken. When it came to picking a degree, suddenly vet med didn't appeal any more and Computing seemed like a good fit as I'd developed a bit of a love of coding during my A-levels and just couldn't face the prospect of studying something dire like Chemistry and sitting in a lab playing with test tubes for the rest of my adult life. Plus I had a habit of exploding things in Chemistry. Supposedly safe and gentle reactions liked to disagree with what they were meant to do when I was in charge and usually resulted in volumes of toxic smoke pouring out the lab windows and holes in desks. Probably a wise choice not to pursue that career avenue any further.

But although I went into computing in a rather haphazard matter, I actually like it and fully intend to end up in a software development job when I graduate. At least in the short term. I have delusions of research grandeur and PhDs and a Nobel Prize or three wouldn't go amiss….ahem…get back on track girl… Sadly the few girls there are who are actually any good at what they do in IT, don't seem to share my enthusiasm for entering a "techy" job. This was brought home to me at a recent selection day at a major corporation where I was the only woman applicant for a programming role. The others who'd made it that far (3 out of 100 interviewees) were looking at entering business, marketing or sales. This is because girls have absolutely no idea what to expect from a CS degree and choose it when they shouldn't. Women get a vague idea that it involves computers at some level or another, think it won't be too difficult or hard work and end up spending 3 years wondering why they aren't spending more time learning packages like the dreaded Access or Excel. The information for girls just isn't there. I blame the British education system. Naturally. Although the US doesn't seem to be much better.

A trend which some clever analytical research people (you know, the ones who seem to float around departments not actually doing anything ever) have identified is that a high proportion of female computing undergraduates come from single sex schools. Oooh I fit that trend too! I'm so unoriginal. Having been to one I can confirm that the teaching environment in them tends to emphasize that girls can do absolutely anything they want in life and have any career imaginable (no they don't tend to advocate anything exotic like stripping), the husband, the kids, the house, hamster and 12 goldfish out in the perfect ornamental pond in the perfect garden which the gorgeous gardener tends to topless in nice tight jeans and still have time to take an evening pottery class darling. Along side the rose tinted view of the world, female schools seem to do a better job of telling girls that it's ok to go and do a "geeky" and "male orientated" degree than mixed schools who blindly shove boys and girls along opposite career paths. I'm generalizing of course. There might be a few enlightened career advisors out there. But even so, the problem lies in the curriculum as well.

Currently, the UK National Curriculum allows something ridiculous like an hour a week of compulsory Information Technology on the timetable for kids aged 11-16. Assuming the schools have the facilities to provide that of course. (I wouldn't quote me on that however. Life is too short to be delving through government documents on lesson time requirements. But in my experience it feels about right! I suppose I could've asked a teacher but like I said, life is too short.) In mixed schools, the focus tends to be on the males in all technical subjects such as electronics and graphics, and the girls don't get a look in. This has to be a factor in the lack of female CS students. If they're not inspired at a young age by a subject, it's unlikely they'll study it at a higher level.

Another problem area is the image of the computing industry as a whole. Women see IT as inherently male orientated and sexist. Well, this isn't entirely true. In my experience I've been accepted readily by male colleagues once they realize I know what I'm doing. Any opposition I've had to deal with has generally been from the pale, photophobic, potbellied stick men who haven't a clue how to deal with any female, never mind one who wanders around with pens stuck in her hair at odd angles, high on caffeine (the programmer's friend), mumbling snippets of code to herself in between games of minesweeper and trying to improve her latest paper aeroplane design. Really must stop with the planes. I go through reams of paper when stuck inside recursive algorithms in my head. Terrible waste. Women are accepted and are taken seriously as long as they don't fall into the role of office slut (there's always one!) and prove they know the technologies they say they do.

The image problem isn't something that's going to go away, particularly with the low numbers of female graduates entering technical jobs and rising up the ranks. Lack of role models is a point of contention. Well known industry leaders tend to be middle aged, geeky, slightly tubby, pale men with glasses, *cough* Bill Gates *cough* The recent appointment of a female CEO at Hewlett Packard is a step in the right direction for us girlies but unfortunately I doubt many young girls have ever heard of Carleton S. Fiorina.

Until we see some rising companies with women founders appearing in the general public's rather narrow field of vision, a 50/50 male female split in every major IT corporation's workforce or a major overhaul of how girls are introduced to computing at school, I don't see young girls abandoning their blonde, anorexic pop idols in favour of today's hidden Ada Lovelaces. Until then, high heeled footprints on the industrial green and beige flooring of university computing departments around the country are likely to remain a rarity and queues in the girls' toilets non-existent.

Lorna Pickford - Feel free to mail me.
Second Year Undergraduate
BSc (Hons) Computer Science with a Year in Industry
University of Kent at Canterbury.