The incredible shrinking pipeline

The ratio of women involved in computer science from high school to graduate school has been dwindling at a startling pace over the past decade. Is there hope in sight? T he pipeline shrinkage problem concerning women in computer science is a known phenomenon (see Figure 1). Although women make up 50% of high school computer science (CS) classes [10], the percentage of bach-elor's degrees in CS awarded to women in the 1993-94 academic year was only 28.4% [7]. (1) At the graduate level, for the academic year 1993-94, the percentages of degrees in CS awarded to women dropped even further: 25.8% at the M.S. level and 15.4% at the Ph.D. level. In addition, for women who become faculty members, the pipeline shrinks through the academic ranks. According to the Computing Research Association's Taulbee Survey, only 15.6% assistant professors , 9.4% associate professors, and 5.7% full professors were women in CS Ph.D.-granting departments during the academic year 1993-94 [1].