In New York Times article “Making Computer Science More Inviting: A Look at What Works,” Claire Cain Miller writes about retaining women in fields, like computer science, that are male-dominated.
Miller speaks favorably about organizations like National Center for Women & Information Technology in how they provide guidance to college faculties on tailoring their programs to recruit more women. While having gender diversity in any professional field is a good thing, there is something strange about these “tailored for ?women” things.
According to Miller, 30 percent of University of Washington’s bachelor’s degrees in computer science last year were obtained by women. Apparently this is a big improvement from five years ago, when only 20 percent of bachelor’s degrees in computer science were obtained by women.
Due to this great 10-percent achievement, the National Center for Women & Information Technology, sponsored by Google, is giving the University of Washington its first award. They plan on giving out this award annually for colleges that have succeeded in retaining women in information technology — yes, retaining, as if women are just flying away from the tech field on their own, due to their ?womanly instincts.
The University of Washington admits to having done three things to create a more diverse (i.e. more female) student base in computer science.
One of these things includes getting girls interested in computer science earlier in their education by offering workshops and field trips to elementary and high school teachers ?and students.
Another one of these things includes re-structuring their college introductory courses to be more ?appealing to a broader range of people, which includes women. Beyond that, they further tried to build a sense of community for women in computer science by sending them off to companies and conferences to meet fellow women in the field — because a sense of community is particularly important to women.
Likewise, IU has also been very women-friendly. The University, by using data to track women-retaining efforts, has won a second-place award from the National Center for Women & Information Technology.
Other schools are following these women-friendly footsteps. Harvey Mudd College in California also ?increased the number of women studying computer science by including pictures of women in their brochures and having more female students as tour guides.
While I am all for gender equality and gender diversity, at this point, I have to stop and question some of these gender diversification methods. Indeed they seem to be pushing things in the right direction, but these women-specific targets and goals can also be counterproductive to gender equality.
By specifically targeting women, they single them out as a group and draw an invisible boundary between the genders, especially when considering those tactics the University of Washington used would appeal to people in general, not just women.
Although women deserve to be welcomed into different professions without discrimination, it’s also important to note that women are people too, and there is much more to people than their gender ?and sex.
nywu@indiana.edu
