RIGHTS-US: Girls Trail Boys in Computer Education

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Oct 14 1998 (IPS) - Girls significantly are trailling behind boys in learning about computers and technology in American schools, according to a report released here Wednesday.

The report, published by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), concludes that computer science is becoming the new “boys’ club,” which threatens “to make women bystanders in the technological 21st century.”

It calls for educators to develop programmes that will increase girls’ enrollment in computer science courses far beyond current levels in which less than one in five high-school students taking college-level computer courses are girls.

“For girls, an equitable education is in many respects still an elusive goal, in sight yet out of reach,” says the 106-page report. Based on more than 1,000 research studies conducted since 1992, it forms part of a series designed to identify and close gender gaps in U.S. public education.

Six years ago, when AAUW released its last report, it found that the proportion of boys enrolled in advanced mathematics and science courses was far greater than that of girls. The new report, entitled ‘Gender Gaps: Where Schools Still Fail Our Children,’ says that substantially more girls are now enrolling in such courses than in 1992.

Even as these gaps have been closed during the past six years, new gaps have opened up in physics and computer science, according to the report, which also found that girls enrolled in ‘School-to- Work’ programmes are being channelled far too much into traditional female occupations.

“The gender gaps we see are evidence that public schools are failing to prepare girls for the 21st century,” says Sandy Bernard, president of the AAUW, one of the country’s biggest women’s and oldest women’s organisations. “High schools still tend to steer girls and boys into School-to-Work programmes that prepare them for traditional occupations for their gender.”

While the U.S. public-school system long has prided itself on providing equal educational opportunities for rich and poor, it also has been conservative in challenging traditional gender roles. For most of this century, for example, it routinely offered industrial arts to boys and home economics to girls.

Girls considered likely to go on to university were channelled towards primary and secondary education and social work, while boys were encouraged to enter the more high-status professions, such as law, medicine, business, science, and teaching at the university level.

The women’s rights movement, which gained strong momentum in the 1970’s, substantially changed the picture and women have greatly increased their numbers in all professions. The percentage of women who received medical degrees, for example, rose from 5.5 percent in 1960 to about 40 percent last year. The percentage receiving law degrees has increased from 2.5 percent in 1960 to 45 percent.

While much progress has been made in these areas, according to AAUW, which has been a major force for change, gaps persist in science and now computer technology.

“Girls have narrowed some significant gender gaps, but technology is now the new ‘boys’ club’ in our nation’s public schools, said AAUW’s executive director, Janice Weinman. “While boys programme and problem-solve with computers, girls use computers for word processing, the 1990’s version of typing.”

In particular, girls and boys in high schools now take a similar number of science courses but boys are more likely than girls to take all three core science courses – biology, chemistry, and physics – before they graduate.

In addition, girls take fewer computer science and computer design courses, and the computer gender gap actually widens between the ages of 14 and 18. In 1996, girls comprised only 17 percent of students who took national advanced placement (AP) tests in computer science.

Altogether, about 25 percent of girls take computer courses, cmopared to 20 percent of boys. But a disproporationate number of girls are enrolled in clerical and data-entry classes, which the report calls the “1990’s version of typing,” as opposed to advanced computer science and graphics courses.

The reasons for these differences should be more closely investigated, says the report, which notes that girls encounter “rewer powerful, active female role models in computer games or software,” and that school software often reinforce gender stereotypes.

Girls also use computers less often than boys outside school, and consistently rate themselves lower than boys on computer ability. That trend applies to girls of all ethnicities, according to the report.

Girls generally consider and pursue a narrower set of career opportunities than do boys, the report says. School-to-Work and other similar programmes which are supposed to help girls enter non-traditional careers have generally fallen short in part because high-school job counselors are overwhelmed by their caseloads.

The report also found that one if five high-school girls says she has been abused sexually or physically and that four out of five reported that they had been sexually harassed. One in four show signs of depression, which – along with delinquency, drug abuse and pregnancy – are the four most serious threats to girls’ health and education.

The report stresses that differences in treatment and experience in school between girls and boys depends to a significant degree on race, class, and ethnic origin. “Caucasions should no more be the model against which African Americans and Hispanics are measured than boys should be the model against which girls are compared,” according to the report.

While the teen birth rate for African-American girls has dropped almost 20 percent over the past decade and nine percent among non-Hispanic whites, there has been no change for Hispanic teens who also suffer disproportionately high school drop-out rates.