Recent posts

Why do I blog about the gender gap in computer science? I am not a research psychologist, and so don't care about the underlying mechanisms for their own sake. Likewise, I do not think of being a computer scientist as a privilege and so do not care about the social justice issues. No, my interest is pragmatic: more computer scientists means more technological progress, which means a better standard of living for me and my children. So to me, everything in this topic boils down to two questions:

1. Are we losing potential computer scientists to other fields?
2. If so, what can we do about it?

The answer to question (1) seems fairly settled by now: yes. In particular, we're losing women.1 Now, most of my posts on the topic have focused on a question not on the list above: why? This is not because I find the question of 'why' interesting in its own right (I don't) but because it might help me answer question (2). So, I'm very happy to report I've found a glimmer of hope in a paper that verifies the effectiveness of a specific, easily-implemented strategy to keep women in CS.

• 1. We might also be losing other minorities, such as racial minorities. In fact, I'm pretty sure we are, but I haven't found any good papers on the topic yet.