Women in the United States have made impressive strides in various fields writes Dana Goldstein, but one place where there is still a lot of ground to cover is females in computer science. She highlights:

• Female computer scientists have actually declined as a percentage over the past 25 years.
• This is a problem because the majority of jobs in the United States are being created in STEM fields – science, technology, engineering and math.
• Those in STEM fields are far less likely to be unemployed meaning that women are missing out on a secure job.
• The wage gap between the genders in STEM fields is small compared to other fields. (Although depressingly, it still exists.)
• Brazil, India and Malaysia have done a better job of getting women into computer science.
• The problem starts at a young age – girls are less likely to have toys that build spatial reasoning skills such as Lego and game consoles. These are some of the things that motivated Mark Zuckerberg to become a programmer.
• The lack of women in the field also leads to embarrassing mishaps such as Apple’s refusal to let Siri treat women equally.

To read more about what one college has tried to do to attract female computer scientists, what Facebook’s (female) COO has to say about it, the importance of video games, how Asus’ recent actions demonstrate the problem, why companies like Microsoft and HP are desperate to find female programmers, and some creative solutions to the problem click here.

Source: Slate