Via Sociological Images (who in turn got it from Kieran Healy) I stumbled across the eye-opening chart below:

(Click the image to get a larger version.) See that? That's the percentage of U.S. PhDs awarded to women in 2009, broken out by discipline. Actually, that's only a small fraction …

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 …

I'm giving this its own top-level post as I suspect it would otherwise escape most people's attention:

Remember our previous discussion of the 'ambient belonging' study? The one about how environmental cues alone (Star Trek poster, comics, video-game boxes, pizza boxes, etc.) can influence how much people (don't) want to …

I did not actually set out to create a 'women in computer science' blog, and I do, in fact, do interesting technical work at my day job. But I can't talk about my day job, and people keep sending me interesting papers like this one (by Stephen Ceci and Wendy …

• Men present: 12 (not including the speaker)
• Women present: 8
• Women missing: 4 (33%)

Apologies for the long absence, gentle readers. My two-year-old has been waking us up two to four times per night for for the past few months, making it nigh-impossible for me to string two coherent sentences …

I was sent this paper (by Amanda B. Diekman, Elizabeth R. Brown, Amanda M. Johnston and Emily K. Clark; behind a paywall-- sorry) in response to my earlier post about research into the gender disparity in computer science. This particular paper more broadly considers all of STEM (science, technology, engineering …

This paper made a bit of a splash when it was first published last year. To quote the MSNBC article:

The stereotype of computer scientists as geeks who memorize Star Trek lines and never leave the lab may be driving women away from the field, a new study suggests. And …

To return to a former topic: I've collected a number of interesting links regarding women in computer science, and while none have individually warranted a blog post on their own the aggregation is now large enough to post.

• The Truth About Gender and Math: An entry in the always-interesting Sociological …

Though I can only wish that I had the energy to fully participate in this worthwhile celebration (things have been crazy-busy) I cannot let the day pass without noting that it is Ada Lovelace Day. I can get behind the concept: instead of talking even more about the women who …

• Men present: 20
• Women present: 1
• Women missing: 19 (95%)

That's an awful lot of missing women. I hope that's the worst I ever see, but the news keeps telling me that it can get much, much worse. I could have been here, for example. (Link goes to Slashdot, and …

• Number of men in audience: 16
• Number of women in audience: 4
• Number of women missing: 12 (75%)

Looks like I'm not the only person to be writing about women in computer science. My friend Andromeda has some thoughts on the matter, talking about why she didn't enter CS.

Also, Bruce Byfield talks about the reaction to an prior article of his about women in FOSS. The comments …

No, really. Where are they? Now that I've noticed, I can't help but see a conspicuous absence of female computer scientists at every CS event I attend. So where are they?¹

I admit it, I'm late to this party. I didn't even notice the problem, really, until very recently …

(I'll explain this a little bit later, but I wanted to get this into the blog before I forgot.) MIT CSAIL CIS talk: Joe Silverman, 2 October 2009:

• Total audience: 31
• Men in audience: 27
• Women in attendance: 4
• Women missing: 23 (85%)