This short article discusses the lack of women in technology-related studies in the United States. The beginning of the article described how girls in K-12 seem to have an advantage over boys in science, math, and engineering areas, but only 1 percent of females taking the SATs in 2006 sought out computer and information sciences as majors. Likewise, female were only 15% of those who took the AP computer science tests in 2006. This article ends with some possible reasons why females are not pursuing computer related degrees and careers, which include misconceptions about females ability to do mathematics and computer science or the misconception that computer related degrees will not allow a person to work with other people.
This article reminds me of a sociology class I took that discussed gender and education. I have my bachelors of science in mathematics, so I was always the target person. “Janelle, why did you choice math?” “Where you encouraged by teachers and/or your parents to pursue math?” It was kind of funny for me because I would just answer, “I like math.” I never really thought about being one of the only girls in my math courses until that sociology class. I do believe that to get females to participate and pursue more computer oriented fields, we need to encourage females and we needed to counterattack the misconceptions that they might have.
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