By Daniel Kent

Speaking to a packed lecture room, guest speaker Dr. Maria M. Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College, discussed the issues revolving around gender and computing.

Klawe discussed several prominent symptoms of the perceived "male-dominated" computer science culture visible in today’s culture: few women play video games, few take computer science courses and even fewer women end up in senior computer science positions. She said that women majors in computer science have also decreased by a factor of two to one of the lowest levels in all of the sciences.

However, Klawe began to dispel some of the most commonly held myths of computing and gender. She mentioned that overall, teenage girls spend more time on the Internet than their male counterparts. Additionally, girls outperform boys in math across the country. Whereas most early computer games were made by young men right out of high school and played by young men, nowadays boys and girls play games like DDR and use consoles like the Wii just about equally, as was shown by a show of hands during the lecture.

Klawe also discussed what she described as one of the largest obstacles facing women in many professional fields: the "imposter syndrome." She described the imposter syndrome as being unable to internalize accomplishments. Many women in the audience agreed that they, too, have experienced the "imposter syndrome." Men in the audience brought up that they also experience the "imposter syndrome," but Klawe replied that men do not feel it to the extent that women do.

With such a divide within the computer science community, Klawe offered some advice: "It’s really easy to fix this – when put in context of a college or university, it’s really not that hard."

Klawe suggested increasing interest in computing by changing the perceived image of computer science, emphasizing applications, providing co-op experience and offering joint majors. Additionally she mentioned that it is integral that we, as a community, work to increase confidence and a sense of belonging.

The Bi-College News asked Professor David Wonnacott of the Computer Science Department how he sees this gender imbalance manifest at Haverford.

"We used to have a relatively balanced ratio of male to female CS majors, especially compared to the national average," Wonnacott said. "As the fraction of female students in our classes dropped, we began studying this issue. It is a bit tricky, as it is hard to separate national trends in total enrollment numbers, national trends in the ratio of men to women, and Haverford-specific factors."

Wonnacott continued that discussions with colleagues like Maria Klawe, as well as research on the topic, lean toward a solution: developing a better support system including, he said, "evening labs staffed by faculty and printed notes for much of the material that we cannot teach from a textbook."

"As we make some changes, and discuss others, I have been particularly happy to note that many of the recommendations we’ve come across, such as increased support, benefit all students," said Wonnacott.

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