How one college is closing the computer science gender gap


There are still relatively few women in tech. Maria Klawe wants to change that. As president of Harvey Mudd College, a science and engineering school in Southern California, she’s had stunning success getting more women involved in computing, NPR reports. Klawe isn’t concerned about filling quotas or being nice to women. Rather, she’s deeply troubled that half the population is grossly underrepresented in this all-important field. Women aren’t setting the agenda and designing products and services that are shaping our lives. They’re getting only about 18 percent of the bachelor’s degrees in computer science, and in the workplace their numbers aren’t much higher. Seated in her modest office on the Claremont, Calif., campus, Klawe, 61, reflects on the stereotype of computer scientists as anti-social nerds, saying it’s out of date. But she is quick to add that women often face barriers spoken and unspoken that discourage them from entering the field. She recalls her own experience growing up in Canada, where she was a top university math student.

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