Women in Computer Science

Overview

Computer science is a rapidly growing field. However many people are worried about the decline of women programmers. The amount of women in the field of computer science was growing until the mid 1980s when personal computers started to become popular. In 1983, 37% of undergraduate computer science majors were women. In 2011, that number was only 18%.

When personal computers began to become commonplace, they were mainly boy's toys, mostly used for games. This is where many historians believe the drop in female computer scientists began. Males were more familiar with computers, being the main users of personal ones. This gave them a leg up in entry-level computer science classes. Recently, there has been a strong movement to entice more women into computer science. There are many conferences and programs attempting to help women break into the field, such as the Grace Hopper conference and the University of Maryland's bits and bytes program.

Popular Programs to Encourage Woman Programmers

Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
Collaborative Research Environment for Women in Undergraduate Science and Engineering
MentorNet
Distributed Mentor Project

Pre-College Programs for Girls Interested in Computer Science

Univeristy of Maryland's Bits and Bytes program
Aspirations in Computing
AspireIT
Girls Who Code Club
National Girls Collaborative Program
Girls RiseNET

The most popular of these programs is the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Named for the first female programmer and Admirl in the US Navy, Grace Hopper Many colleges, including Florida State University, provide the opportunity for females in the field to attend this confrenece every Ocotober. This three day event includes many speakers and lectures, as well as awards for women who have excelled in the field. The lectures and speeches range from tops like "How to contribute to open soucre" to "Anita Borg's Vision: A Global Community of Women leaders" and "Buliding your professional persona". All the information female programmers need to succeed in the field of computer science.
Grace Hopper as an Admirl in the United States Navy

Female Programmers from History

One thing that many people are unaware of is that many of the first programmers were women. Below are some examples, starting with the 15 most important female programmers from history. These women have contributed to many aspects relating to computer science, starting with Miss Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, who is known for writing the first algorithm. She now has her own holiday, award, and programming langugae: Ada, the name the Department of Defense gave to its own programming language.

Important Women in Computer Science

Ada Lovelace	Credited with writing the first algorithm
Grace Hopper	First female programmer, first women to get a PHD from Yale, first women to reach the rank of Admirl in the US Navy
Jean Bartik	One of the first ENIAC programmers
Radia Perlman	"Mother of the Internet", invented the spanning-tree protocol
Carol Shaw	First female video game designer
Roberta Williams	Known for development on King's Quest videogame series
Carla Meninsky	Game designer for the Atari 2600 console. One of only 2 female engineers working on Atari
Sophie Wilson	Designed the Acorn Microcomputer
Karen Sparck Jones	Founder of information retrieval. Known for the concept of inverse document frequency
Erna Schneider Hoover	Created a computerized telephone switching system that used a computer to monitor incoming calls
Sister Mary Kenneth Keller	Assisted in development of the BASIC computer language, which was previously "men only"
Betty Holberton	One of the first computors on ENIAC. Became the Chief of the Programming Research Branch at the David Taylor Model Basin
Frances Allen	The first IBM Fellow, first woman to win the Turning Award
Jean E. Sammet	Developed the first computer language, FORMAC,
The Ladies of ENIAC	The first computors- worked on ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Engineering

"By learning to create technology, girls learn to speak up." ~Regina Agyare

About the Author

Samantha Mott is a senior at Florida State University. She studies computer science and will be graduating May 1st 2015. After college Samantha will be moving to Phoenix, AZ and working for General Motors as a web devloper. This site was created as a project for a Web Design class. The references used for this site are listed below.