The following is an excerpt of an October 2000 report presented to a chapter of the American Association of University Women, AAUW, by Kathleen Slayton.

The AAUW Educational Foundation has conducted a research program and produced a report, "Gender Gaps," which found cause for serious concern in the area of information technology. The report indicated alarming disparities in girls and boys enrollments in advanced computer courses. Girls were less likely to take high-level computing classes in high school, and comprised just 17 percent of those taking Advanced Placement computer science exams. Girls outnumbered boys only in their enrollment in word processing classes, arguably the 1990 version of typing classes.

While high school girls and boys take similar numbers of science courses, boys are more likely than girls to take all three core science courses - biology, chemistry, and physics - by graduation.

This year, AAUW Educational Foundation’s publication, "Tech-Savvy," found that while girls are innately more verbal than boys, they do not necessarily have a working knowledge of computer language. As a result, girls are more likely to express bewilderment and confusion about technology. They differ in their attitudes and abilities more than boys. Girls enjoy the computer for the connections and friendships they make via e-mail. Boys prefer the shoot ‘em up games.

Interestingly, girls take the moral high ground, positioning themselves as morally or socially more evolved than boys who, they tell us, enjoy taking things apart and interacting with machines. They tend to present the Internet as a vice in the hands of boys, but a virtue in the hands of girls, because boys use it to play games and fool around while girls use it as a source of information. In addition, girls have specific criticisms of the violence in current games as well as the general sense that they would be more interested in games that allowed them to create rather than destroy.

It is encouraging to see that K-Mart and WalMart are limiting the sale of violent videogames to those above 18, but this doesn’t limit the access to minors once the game is in the home.

Consequently, girls’ more limited involvement with computers has more to do with disenchantment than with anxiety or intellectual deficiency.

Science, Math, and Computer Technology are the springboard to the moneyed jobs our nation offers. The more young women enter these fields, the more we break the cycle of the feminization of poverty. The failure to include and encourage girls in advanced-level computer science courses threatens to make women bystanders in the technological 21st century. Instead of dividing our society into the haves and have-nots, it will be divided into those who can do, and those who cannot.

Recommendations

• We need to "change the public face of computing." Girls complain that they do not see women in the media who are actively involved in computing. Perhaps we need the Mary Tyler Moore version of computer technology rather than the entrenched Dilbert version of a socially isolated male.
• We need to increase the visibility of women who have taken the lead in designing and using computer technology. Girls express an interest in seeing such women, who have often not become public figures.
• We need to continue the conversation about issues of gender in the computer culture. This conversation must take seriously girls’ and women’s valid critiques of computer design, use, and applications. If we say it long enough and loudly enough, they will finally get the message.
• We need to highlight the human, social and cultural dimensions of computers rather than technical advances, or the speed of the machines.
• Parents and educators need to encourage girls to "tinker" with computers. These activities are crucially important for empowering women as designers and builders, not just consumers and end users.

Check AAUW’s website http://www.aauw.org for books and research material on this important topic.