Sociocultural Factors of Computer Science Access

By Ali Roberts

Computer science is generally (and statistically) considered a field dominated by men in the United States, but this wasn’t always the case. In one episode of NPR’s Planet Money podcast, “When Women Stopped Coding,” the hosts talk to some of the women involved in programming some of the first digital computers. Elsie Shutt was one of those important women who started one of the first software companies in the world in 1958. Shutt’s company, which was run entirely by women, was contracted by Honeywell to work on an operating system. Shutt’s company went on to be quite successful, securing contracts with the U.S. Government and the U.S. Space Program, to name a few (Kenney & Henn, 2014.). Women like Elsie Shutt and her employees were heavily involved in the emergence of computer science, a presence that has fluctuated over the decades and declined greatly from the 1990s through the 2010s (datascience@berkeley, 2021).

The answer to why the number of women in computer science programs and careers decreased may not seem obvious at first, but considering some of the cultural and social trends surrounding computer science might help us better understand the shift. One of the women interviewed in “When Women Stopped Coding” shared her experience going through a computer science program during college in the mid-1980s; her computer knowledge was much further behind and very basic compared to many of the men in her class. This experience resulted in a huge drop in confidence and she later decided to change her major. While this anecdote alone does not provide a universal explanation for the decline in women in computer science, it does provide a sense of what some women may have experienced and why many turned away from computer science. As one of the hosts of “When Women Stopped Coding” mentions, there was no way to be successful in a computer science career without access to a home computer. Looking at some of the cultural trends regarding computers and computer science shows that much advertising was aimed at boys and men. Computers in the home were often portrayed as toys for boys when marketed toward the home user, which meant that girls were less likely to have hands-on experience with computers than their boy classmates. These trends translated to popular culture and media, where gender roles surrounding computers and tech were solidified even further.

One crucial layer missing in the podcast episode, however, is how these sociocultural factors affected levels of access to computer science by women of color. Shifts in how computer science is taught and talked about have resulted in a slight increase of women in the computing workforce in recent years, but this workforce consists of only 3 percent Black women, 2 percent Hispanic women, and 7 percent Asian women (datascience@berkeley, 2021). Research has shown that a large part of what discourages women from pursuing computer science lies within the way introductory computer science courses are taught and the rhetoric used (Women in Computer Science, 2020). These findings highlight an urgent need for culturally relevant and culturally responsive computer science education in which women, particularly women of color, are better supported and able to see a relevant future for themselves in the world of computing. Additionally, we can continue to shift the dominant narrative of who computer science is for by speaking out and celebrating the great women of computer science history and highlighting the work of women of color computer scientists.

datascience@berkeley. (2021, July 14). Changing the curve: Women in computing. The online Master of Information and Data Science from the UC Berkeley School of Information. Retrieved January 15, 2022, fromhttps://ischoolonline.berkeley.edu/blog/women-computing-computer-science/

Kenney, C., & Henn, S. (2014, October 17). When women stopped coding (No. 576) [Audio podcast episode]. In Planet money. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/17/356944145/episode-576-when-women-stopped-coding

Women in computer science. ComputerScience.org. (2021, December 23). Retrieved January 15, 2022, fromhttps://www.computerscience.org/resources/women-in-computer-science/