Since 2009, the number of female undergraduates majoring in CS at Stanford has increased 9.5%. The introductory course has reached gender parity.
By Billy Gallagher (Writer, TechCrunch)
“Dude, I think that girl sitting in front of us is a CS major.”
“Nah, look at that glittery shit in her hair.”
Bonnie McLindon, a junior computer science major at Stanford University, fumes as she works in CS 103, her hardest class at Stanford, office hours. The two guys sitting behind her are referring to the tinsel in her hair, a tradition of Stanford’s Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. Despite serving as section leader and interning at Apple, McLindon struggles with the stereotype that girls, especially sorority girls, don’t major in computer science.
At Stanford, just under 21% of undergraduate computer science majors, the school’s most popular major, are women.
The school is situated in the heart of Silicon Valley, which is starved for talented engineers; companies aggressively recruit Stanford undergrads with coding skills for high paying internships and full time jobs.
“Getting more girls involved in CS is probably the most impactful thing we can do to address the talent shortage,” Sequoia Capital’s Jim Goetz tells me.
» Read the full article at TechCrunch.
