I have known about the gender gap in computer science since before I had even taken a computer science course. I will say as a female, a feeling I have had more than once in my time taking classes in CS is “oh no, there are going to be so many males in this class, they are going to automatically think I don’t know what I am doing” or “they aren’t going to want to be in this group project with me just because I’m a girl and they don’t think I can be useful “. So from experience, I can understand the hesitation for women in the IT field. As for why this is the case, even after reading articles on the matter, it seems no one really knows.
As for why this is even a problem that would be fortunate to fix, it seems it comes down to if there is a large chunk of the population that is not engaging in CS, then there is a large chunk of valuable potential that CS is missing out on. This is especially detrimental as there is a huge shortage of computer scientists overall right now. The result of this is that anyone with a computer science degree is most likely able to walk into a high paying, high skill demanding job, even if they ultimately can’t handle what needs to be done. If there were more applicants in the field, then companies can be more selective and choose the best people for their company.
After reading the article called “Why is Computer Science Unpopular Among Women” by Texas Tech Today, I unfortunately didn’t think it gave very clear reasoning. The article seemed to contradict itself in places, and left me wondering what specific point they were looking to get across is certain paragraphs, but overall I most agreed with their idea about self-confidence and interest. To slightly twist that paragraph and add my own ideas, I would say that a great deal of women know that they could succeed in the CS field if they wanted to, it’s just that to say it plainly, it simply does not appeal to most people as a whole. It is a hard, tedious, frustrating field, and most women would rather make a career out of something more charismatic, or something they can put more of their personality into. I theorize that men tend to dominate the CS field because like it says in the article, it is a job that a man can claim to have that no one will question because of his gender. It is a “safe” job for a man to wants to stay away from being perceived as feminine at any angle. So I think that the fact that there is a shortage of computer scientists is proof that CS doesn’t appeal to many people in general, it just appeals more to men because it is labeled as a respectable job for a man.
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