“Women are woefully underrepresented in IT. With few exceptions,
women represent less than 30 percent of the IT workforce in most
countries, while comprising approximately half the workforce. Even
worse, undergraduate enrollment in CS majors has trended downwards,
from 36 percent of US graduates in CS down to only 17 percent in
2004. Commonly cited barriers to entry of women into IT include
discrimination, low self-efficacy, perceived difficulty, lack of
role models and mentors, the ‘geek’ stereotype, and even the
definition of IT itself. The issue is of concern to our industry
and is being studied extensively. Proposals and projects to
overcome the barriers are springing up all over the world, with
varying areas of focus, from middle-school girls to retention of
experienced women engineers.“In the late 1990s, Carnegie-Mellon University was able to
improve entry and retention rates significantly. What worked for
them…?”