Unfortunately for the author, the numbers simply don&#x27;t support the narrative she wishes to paint:<p>&gt; The percentage of women studying computer science actually has fallen since the 1980s. Dr. Cheryan theorizes that this decline might be partly attributable to the rise of pop-culture portrayals of scientists as white or Asian male geeks in movies and TV shows like “Revenge of the Nerds” and “The Big Bang Theory.”<p>CS degrees took a <i>huge</i> jump from 5,000 per year in 1975 with 18% being women to 39,000 per year in 1985 with 37% being women.  Perhaps she should ask what caused <i>that</i>.<p>I&#x27;ll tell you what--Punchcards, COBOL and the PDP&#x2F;Vax.  Suddenly everybody put their accounting systems on computers, and you needed people who could program them or feed them data.  And that required keyboard skills--which were taught to <i>women</i> because every high school had secretarial classes (typing&#x2F;shorthand&#x2F;dictation).  And, right around when the decline started happening (1984&#x2F;1985), those secretarial programs <i>all got wiped out</i>.<p>Perhaps if we start training women to be secretaries again, we&#x27;ll fix the CS enrollment problem (CAUTION: I&#x27;m being sarcastic here about drawing stupid conclusions that fit your desired narrative).<p>In addition, if you look at Master&#x27;s degrees awarded, you find that the percentage of women earning Master&#x27;s in CS is about 28% and has bounced around that number since 1985 and been around 30% since 2001.  The percentage of PhD&#x27;s going to women in CS has been gradually increasing every year since 1977 or so and stands at 21% in 2010.<p>These aren&#x27;t the statistics for a field women are having difficulty entering (take a look at electrical engineering for that ...).  The fact that female CS undergraduate percentages crashed in 2005 is a bit concerning (similar downblip in EE--wonder what the issue is), but that should be a local cause that should be discoverable rather than systemic.<p>References:
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