Despite all the efforts to increase the number of women in technology, computer science programs in the United States are increasingly male-dominated.
In 2013, 18% of computer and information sciences bachelor's degree recipients were women in 2013, down from 37% in 1985, according to the National Center for Women In Technology. This has huge implications for women in tech startups or tech jobs in general. The pool is shrinking.
You might assume that the pattern in other parts of the world would be the same, or that it might be worse for women in some places. But you'd be wrong.
America visitors to the Middle East, the Philippines and India have long remarked over the greater representation of women. In startup incubators and competitions in the Middle East, for instance, women are sometimes nearly half the class. Silicon Valley is far less diverse.
"The Economist reported last year that 25% of startups in the Middle East are women," noted Christopher Schroeder, author of Startup Rising. "This confirms what I see regularly and, in fact, I've judged startup competitions of thousands where the numbers are as high as 40%!"
Strictly comparable stats are hard to come by. But the statistics out there suggest that in Europe and the rest of the world, including the Middle East and India, there are more women in the computer science and high tech classrooms and startups. For instance:
• In Europe, women remain well-represented in universities. For instance, 49% of the tertiary students in the science, math, computer, engineering, and manufacturing fields among 17 European countries in 2012, were women, according to statistics compiled by Catalyst.
What about in the workforce?
• In the United States, in 2012, the share of women's employment in high-tech occupations ranges from 9% among electrical engineers to a high of 26% in computer and information systems.
• In Europe, women's share of this growth sector of the economy looks quite a bit higher: Women's share of high-tech knowledge intensive services in Europe, 2008-2010, was more than 25% in all of those same countries, with the exception of the Netherlands.
Some countries Americans tend to think of as "backwards" are actually forwards on this issue.
• In India, 42.1% of bachelor of science students were women in 2006-7, according to Catalyst's compilation
• In the Middle East, a preliminary survey of seven universities in countries including Palestine, the UAE and Saudi Arabia by Sana Odeh, clinical professor of computer science at New York University, found 30-70% of the enrollees in computer science programs were women. Many of the programs she surveyed comprised students from many countries, so the stats are partly a reflection of the Middle East and partly of the international community.
It's not clear why there's a disparity between the U.S. and the rest of the world. In talking to students, Odeh is finding the young women students seem to carry little baggage. "There's no perception that this is a man's field," she says. "They're just passionate. They say, 'I love math, I love engineering.'"
And they love computer science, she said.
What's going on? Women in other parts of the world love computer science in growing numbers, while women here increasingly reject it as a career? This may be a reflection of the fact that the high-tech industry is older in the United States than elsewhere. Even those women who graduate with high-tech degrees in the United States tend to drop out of the high-tech workforce at much higher rates than men
The Athena Report called this this scissors moment, the point on a graph when the line that shows women's presence in tech drops precipitiously. "Over time, fully 52% of highly qualified females working for SET companies quit their jobs, driven out by hostile work environments and extreme job pressures," said the report, from the Center for Work-Life Policy, in 2008.
Women entering college may be looking ahead and concluding high-tech is a dead end if they want families and/or a pleasant workplace.
In other countries, perhaps, that feedback loop hasn't yet formed.
But it is pretty clear, holding up a mirror to the rest of the world, that the lack of women in tech is not a universal problem -- it's homegrown, out of American culture.
