History of Women in the Coding Industry

During World War II, many women in the U.S. were hired as code breakers to try to hack the ciphers of Japan and Germany (as documented in Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II. After the war, women math whizzes were critical to the American effort to win the Space Race (as highlighted in movie Hidden Figures) as there was an urgent demand for people to do long calculations by hand and later with the computer.  

As recently as 1995, the percentage of women in the computer science field was 37%.  But by 2017 that figure had shrunk to 24%.  Worse, the trend seems to be in the direction of even fewer women in the computer science field in the coming decade.

Girls Drop Interest in Coding

Girls seem to be very intrigued by coding between the ages of 6-12 (64%), but then there is a sharp drop in interest during middle and high school years (32%).  By the time they are freshmen in college, the interest has dipped to 4%.    Only 20% of high school students who took the Computer Science AP exam in 2013 were girls, while there was gender parity in all other math and science AP exams. Things don't improve much in college as only 18% of all computer science degrees in the U.S. were awarded to women in 2015.  

Both dismal statistics beg two questions:

• What happened during the last three decades that coding became dominated by men and not women?  

• What happens to girls between ages 12 to 18 that makes their interest in coding dip so dramatically?

It's Cool To Be a Girl Coder

During the 1950s to 1970s, computer software (or coding) was dominated by women as most male computer engineers in those decades focused on building hardware. Then in the 1980s with the dramatic increase of personal computers and game software that drove its usage, the popular image of the computer nerd became that of an introverted boy obsessed with coding. 

Popular movies such as War Games (1983), Weird Science (1984) and Back to the Future (1985) featured boy nerds who are "good at computers".  In the 1990s and 2000s the media focused on tech titans who were almost all male - Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg to name a few, and what followed was a steady erosion of girls being interested in computer science.

Media stereotypes and lack of role models both play a critical role in painting computer science as "not for girls".  According to pueblo science, girls are more likely to be interested in coding if they have a strong female figure as a teacher. Further, girls were also more likely to stay inspired in class if they had a motivational teacher, regardless of the teacher’s gender. 

Starting Early and Keeping It Up

As you see above, there is abundant interest in coding by girls during elementary school.  To prevent girls from giving up on coding early on, parents, teachers and mentors should point out the many applications of coding to other academic and extracurricular interests.  

The interest can be kept up by making coding entwined with other subjects and activities in school and in extracurricular activities.  Seeing how coding can be used in robotics and other hands-on science and engineering activities makes it more likely that girls will view coding as not a solitary "geeky" activity but as part of a social activity that leads to competency in all academic areas.  

Building Confidence with Constant Practice

Like practicing a musical instrument, no one is an expert violinist when they first start.  It is the result of hard work and long hours of practice that builds a young musician's competency and confidence.  Parents and teachers must help girls build confidence in computer science by encouraging them to practice it for multiple years instead of seeing it as a one-semester/one summer week activity.  Such one-shot experiences tend to make it likely for girls to think of coding as something they are "not good at", instead of a skill that they should keep working on through the years.    

Stanford researchers have found that children's self-evaluation of academic competency are strongly related to parents' appraisals of their academic ability. If girls are hearing subtle messages from parents, peers and teachers that they are not as good as their male counterparts in computer science, this may be perpetuating a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Do not feed the stereotype that some people "just don't get coding" by exhibiting that behavior however casually in front of your children.

Classroom Environment

Besides trying to balance the female/male ratio in a classroom, girls can feel safer and more comfortable in classroom settings that are not overtly gendered. Due to pop culture, computer science has been represented as a job held by socially awkward men. A classroom filled with posters and memorabilia from male dominated video games such as Call of Duty or FIFA sends a subtle message that ties interests in video games and sports as a prerequisite for an interest in coding. In 2015, Journal of Educational Psychology reported that girls were three times more likely “to say that they would sign up for a computer science class in rooms that were decorated with nature posters, lamps, and plants”.

Finding Role Models

While it is hard to find female STEM role models being represented today in the media, women in STEM were commemorated in March of this year by the Smithsonian. In the #IfThenSheCan exhibit, 120 women in the STEM field were 3D printed into statues to display in the Smithsonian Gardens. Not only does the exhibit exemplify powerful women in the field, but it was also created by a woman based philanthropy group called Lyda Hill Philanthropies. According to the Smithsonian, “the exhibit is the largest collection of statues of women ever assembled together,” (Smithsonian).

The collection of statues consist of “contemporary women STEM innovators” with a featured QR code on each statue so that visitors can be taken to a page explaining their moving and uplifting personal experiences in the field. It is of great importance for there to be exhibits such as these in order to not only honor women in STEM, but to set an example for young girls that they can be just like them one day.

References:

https://puebloscience.org/women-in-coding-hacking-the-gender-gap/

https://www.discoveryeducation.com/details/school-districts-bridging-computer-science-gender-gap/ 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_disparity_in_computing 
https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/smithsonian-launches-new-womens-futures-month-national-mall-debut-120-statues