Gender Trends: The Statistics

Current research on gender and technology indicates that in the United States, women are lagging behind men when it comes to advancing in the field of technology. Women presently constitute 20% of Information Technology (IT) professionals in the United States. see chart Each year the proportion of women receiving Bachelor's degrees increases in all disciplines except computer science. see chart As few as 10% of associated professors and 6% of full computer science professors are female. see chart Less than 33% of high school computer science students are female. see chart The number of females enrolled in advanced computer classes in high school and college are falling. see chart

Carol Burger, National Science Foundation   Tech Savvy, 2000, a seminal report released by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), highlights the gender and cultural gap in technology education and the Information Technology field. More AAUW findings are demonstrated in graphs in the Resources section. How can we eliminate the gender gap in the field of technology?Next