In my computer engineering class of 250 students, there was only one girl (the class of one year prior had 0 girls) - and this was after aggressive affirmative action programs to attract more girls.
Honestly I just felt sorry for the poor gal, she always seemed very embarrassed being the only girl in the class, as if she made the wrong choice by being there or something.
It often made me wonder, should school administration be actively thinking of the social dynamics that play out with this kind of imbalance? You're going to have a few frustrated boys in a situation like this... and a few exhausted gals (they have to say 'no' often). What do you do, if you're in that hot seat. Do you worry about these things, or do you keep trying to admit new students purely on a merit basis?
I agree it's a very tough situation for everyone involved, and there seems to be no good short term solution to this issue. The only thing that can be done is to create long term interest in Computer Science among girls and to support the decision of those girls who've already decided to try CS.
What's interesting at my school is that there are more girls even in Electrical Engineering than in CS.
So this means that CS truly has the most messed up girl/guy ratio probably out of ANY major at my school (it's a huge state school too)
As a guy it's frustrating because it creates a barrier to easily meeting girls in your major, an advantage that many other people have. I can rarely work on my school assignments with girls, or talk about common classes with girls, or anything similar to that kind of interaction that should exist within each major.
Sure, I'll make 6 figures guaranteed when I graduate, but at what cost? I really do love what I do though so the passion for that encompasses all. Yet at the same time it'd be foolish to ignore issues like this and pretend they're not a problem, because they definitely are.
Though we're getting pretty meta from the main topic, I think part of the problem are parents that don't encourage their daughters to go into hard sciences and engineering more. Until parents abandon some of the long held stereotypes of roles and jobs that boys and girls should have when they grow up (as well as the type of toys they should play with), it's going to be a struggle to find more of a balance in many of the hard science degree programs and careers.
Computer Science and Computer Engineering sadly end up being viewed in the same light for boys as Nursing is for girls. That is, there is a long standing cultural notion in the United States that girls are supposed to be nurses and boys are not, despite how silly that all seems. It's even more perplexing, since many of the early computer scientists were women, just as many of the nurses starting in the 19th century were founders of their modern profession (with the Crimean War and the American Civil War).
Institutions may try to shape and encourage change, but it comes down to the parents understanding that roles and jobs should be independent of one's gender and reinforcing that notion in their children. Especially in the United States where parents play a large role in the intended degree of their children because they are generally expected to help pay for part of the tuition. A school may suggest a degree for a student, but in the end, a parent may be the larger factor in a student's degree choice.
That's not entirely true, as there are plenty of women in the life sciences (unless we were to spark an internecine war within STEM by claiming that bio and medicine aren't the hard sciences). Anecdata seems to show that there are also more women in physics, math, and other engineering such as civil or even mechanical and electrical than there are in CS.
One possible cause may be the traditional nerd stigma that afflicts CS. In recent years it's broadened up, though ironically now there's a small fratty brogrammer subculture in CS. (Though not in academia, I feel, but in the startup industry that follows.)
I know there's more, but the numbers are still far from even in many hard science & engineering degrees. I started out in Civil Engineering and even there, the ratio of guys to girls was scarcely better than when I transferred to Computer Science (this was in the few degree specific courses I took as well).
I do consider Bio and Medicine to be hard sciences and you are correct the gender imbalance is significantly less than some other science fields. However, it seems to be more acceptable in American Culture for parents to accept their daughters going into those types of degrees perhaps due to the relation to traditional career paths women have gone into (such as nursing). If that's true, it's rather sad and hopefully such preconceived notions die out in the near future.
I'm curious though as to how many female students end up going into Computer Science or Engineering because a family member or parent was in one of those fields. I have a few female friends either pursuing or have obtained a degree in Computer Science and each had at least one parent that was in a related field.
Michigan State 1997. 3 might have been an exaggeration but not by much. The Lab instructor was female, and there were maybe 12 at the start of the semester, but a few dropped, and on any given day only 75% attendance so it sure felt like there were none.
Line Dancing Class was the opposite, 62 Girls 5 guys. Two of the guys were a couple. 1 of the guys was married to one of the girls.
I would have gone in to line dancing as a career but I don't really like the music, and I'm not sure how much money there is in it.
