User:Ychen304/sandbox

Notes for peer-reviewers:


 * Bold sections are my contribution
 * Unbold sections are sources and citations

Gender Disparity in Computing
'''Gender disparity in computing refers to the growing gender disparity in the field of computing. It has become a global concern due to the emergence of the Information Age. Moreover, the field of computing increasingly has developed a gender gap in which has made the field become more male dominant'''. With the decrease in women pursuing education within the computing field and women working in field, lack of diversity in field occurred. Concerns of improving perspective in the field, creating more diversity, and attempting to close the gender gap motivated debates addressing gender equality due to the growing necessity of computing and technology in society.

Background
When computer technology initially developed during World War II and continued into the 1960s, women made up the majority of the computing workforce, especially in the United States. From the 1950s to the 1980s, women were frequently employed to create software and in 1984 the number of women in America taking computer science at university reached a high of 37%. However, following the publish of personal computers, which were said to be marketed almost exclusively to men, the number of women studying computer science related degrees dipped and sharply fell to 18% between 1990 and 2010, according to NPR.

Women in Computing Today
The lack of diversity in the US tech company have been a common phenomenon, which is a significant and consistent challenge for tech companies to solve gender and ethnical inequality. From tech start-ups to Fortune 500 industry anchors, tech companies of all sizes recognize that their workforce continues to draw mainly from a small segment of the talent pool—predominantly white and Asian men from elite educational institutions. Drawing from a narrow talent pool leaves money, innovative ideas, and star employees on the table—and potentially exposes organizations to criticism and reputational risk.

Statistics in Education
Gender gap behind computing field is widespread in the universities. For example, women are underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in most countries, including Germany and the U.S. This was demonstrated in several surveys investigating the proportion of women in the STEM fields for specific populations. Some of these studies, for example, investigated the number of enrolled students or the percentage of female professors at universities. Other studies analyzed the disparities in research funding. Nearly all these surveys selected a particular population of women in consideration of their university degree or their nationality.

Gender disparity in education is clearly unavoidable to the neighbouring country of USA, Canada. A study of over 7000 high school students in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada showed that the degree of interest in the field of computer science for young women is comparably lower than that of young men. The same effect is seen in higher education; for instance, only 4% of female college freshmen expressed intention to major in computer science in the US . Likely, gender gap in computing is not only limited to North America, but also the European country UK. In the UK today, only 9% of girls schools offer computing at A-level, versus 44% of boys schools. At the undergraduate level, women made up 14% of 1971’s intake in the subject, which rose to 37% by 1983 – only to sink back to 18% by 2010.

'''Universities should be taking significant actions to combat the ingrained trends, which masculinity is dominantly in charge of the computing field. One way to close the gender disparity in computing is to improve diversity at point of admission. By overcoming this complex inequality, universities can be paring positive action for gender balance with long-term targets aimed at gender parity.'''

Statistics in the Workforce
Gender gap in computing does not only exist in education, but also in workplace. In the workplace, women are now as good as men when it comes to computing performance, but there is still a gender gap when it comes to confidence, according to our new research . Although women outperform men in solving computing task and other computer-related work, they’re usually less confident to rate their own performance as great than men do.

Women's representation in the computing and information technology workforce has been falling from a peak of 38% in the mid-1980s. From 1993 through 1999, NSF's SESTAT reported that the percentage of women working as computer/information scientists (including those who hold a bachelor's degree or higher in an S&E field or have a bachelor's degree or higher and are working in an S&E field) declined slightly from 33.1% to 29.6% percent while the absolute numbers increased from 170,500 to 185,000. Numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Catalyst in 2006 indicated that women make up 27-29% of the computing workforce. A National Public Radio report in 2013 stated that about 20% of all U.S. computer programmers are female. In open source fields, only 10% of programmers are women.

'''Technology companies should be making concerted effort to promote and hire more woman for high-profile jobs that are associated with technology, which is able to achieve high-percent representation of woman through technical position. Additionally, shaping a strong role models and inspiring mentorship programs in tech companies enable female to strengthen their networks skill, and engender their interest in computing due to the predomination of male faculty in workplace.'''

Notable Organizations

 * Ada Initiative
 * Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, group for support of women, runs the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing yearly conference.
 * Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Committee on Women
 * Association for Women in Computing: one of the first professional organizations for women in computing. AWC is dedicated to promoting the advancement of women in the computing professions.
 * Girl Geek Dinners, an International group for women of all ages.
 * Girls Who Code, a national non-profit organization dedicated to closing the gender gap in technology.
 * LinuxChix, a women-oriented community in the open source movement.
 * National Center for Women & Information Technology, a nonprofit that increases the number of women in technology and computing.
 * Systers, a moderated listserv dedicated to mentoring women in the Systers community.
 * Women in computing in Canada
 * Women in Technology International, global organization dedicated to the advancement of women in business and technology.
 * Women's Technology Empowerment Centre (W.TEC), non-profit organisation focused on providing technology education and mentoring to Nigerian women and girls.
 * Women Who Code

Films

 * 1) CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap (2015) 
 * 2) Hidden Figures (2016) 
 * 3) CodeGirl (2015) 
 * 4) Ghostbusters (2016)