Women in computing to decline even more
Numbers will drop to 22% from 24% by 2025 if issue ignored
New research SAN FRANCISCO warns that at the rate we’re going, the number of women in the computing workforce will decline to 22% from 24% by 2025 if nothing is done to encourage more of them to study computer science. The research from Accenture and non- profit group Girls Who Code says taking steps now to encourage more women to pursue a computer science education could triple the number of women in computing to 3.9 million in that same time frame. Women account for 24% of computing jobs today but could account for 39% by 2025, according to the report, Cracking the Gender Code. And greater numbers of women entering the computer science field could boost women’s cumulative earnings by $ 299 billion and help the U. S. fill the growing demand for computing talent, said Julie Sweet, Accenture’s group chief executive for North America. “The solution starts with education — we need to develop more tailored programs that ap-
peal to girls’ interests and take a more targeted and sequenced approach to encourage girls to pursue ( computer science) related learning at each stage of their education,” Sweet said.
Accenture and Girls Who Code identified factors that influence women’s decisions to study and work in computing, including a survey of girls ages 12- 18, college students, computing professionals, parents and teachers, and then used the results to interview more than 8,000 people to validate the findings.
Researchers then created a model to estimate the potential changes to female participation in computing and calculate the potential effect on women’s earnings.
The share of women in the computing workforce has slipped to 24% today from 37% in 1995.