An Analysis of Gender Gap in Computer Science in High School

Abstract

Computer Science has been a male-dominated field even at its beginning, and it continues to be so. A distinct gap has developed between the number of women and men studying and working in Computer Science, commonly termed as the Gender Gap. Previous studies have uncovered this gap at its worst during college education, where women occupy a small fraction of the STEM-related classes. Surveys and data were taken from a high school to be analyzed. These provide insight into why female students are not as encouraged as their male counterparts regarding the subject. The results show that even at a stage as early as high school, differences in confidence, upbringing and exposure have often deterred female students from pursuing Computer Science. Contrary to the belief that due to the rising dependency on technology more women are pursuing Computer Science, a four-year plot shows that in high schools there is rather a widening gender gap.