Much research has documented the existence of a gap between boys and girls in math and science (see "Gray Matters" Dec. 1997 and April, 1998). More recently, research is addressing the gender gap in technology. Does it exist? Should it be a concern? What can be done about it? John Merrow, in The Merrow Report, National Public Radio, October 26, 1999, began his program by stating that through relentless and concerted effort, improvement was shown in advanced math participation and achievement among females between 1990 and 1994, but "it has not happened in computer science and so there is a gap."

Donna Milgram, Founder and Executive Director of the Institution for Women in Trades, Technology and Science (IWITTS), a national, non-profit organization dedicated to integrating women into traditionally male-dominated occupations, is currently principle investigator for the Women Tech Project, funded by the National Science Foundation. She is eveloping a Web-based gender strategy for recruiting females to Cisco education academies.

Dr. Milgram's research in 41 states shows similar trends nationwide regardless of community. Significantly few computer science students are women and the gap is even more pronounced in programming and advanced courses. In the 1998 AAUW Educational Foundation's Technology Commission report, Gender Gaps, 17% of high school students taking the AP exam in computer science were female, a statistic essentially unchanged from year to year. Oddly enough, from 1978 to 1985, computer science undergraduates were approaching 50%, but by 1998, women held only 28% of B.A.s and 24% of M.A.s in computer science, and 9% and 19% respectively in engineering-related technologies. The commission is careful not to suggest that it is the purpose of public education to equip students to fulfill specific job needs, but they are concerned that the gender gap in technology is not preparing men and women equally to "take advantage of economic opportunities and to participate fully and meaningfully in new communications media" (Weinman & Haag, Educational Leadership, Feb., 1999).

Milgram found that young women in entry level courses such as word processing, are often preparing for more traditional careers such as secretarial work. "It's still quite different than networking two computers together, being involved in the hardware, writing computer code, or doing computer programming. These are skills and occupations in which most young women still do not think of themselves." Ellen Tarlin, in Harvard Educational Review 1997, said that while the Internet is attracting more women, 85% of the users of newer, more powerful areas of the Net are still men. Richard Keep at Centaurus HS finds this reflected in his students. Young women are as willing, if not more willing, to use computers as tools in their education, but they still do not take the more technical (programming) classes at the same rate as boys (only 15%). Once enrolled, however, he reports the drop-out rates for boys and girls to be about the same.

Sherry Turkle, co-chair of the AAUW Educational Foundation's Technology Commission, believes that female students generally perceive that they are faced with a choice of "putting themselves at odds either with the cultural associations of technology or with the cultural associations of being a woman." In the 1998 AAUW report, "girls of all ethnicities consistently rated themselves significantly lower than boys on computer abilities and were less likely than boys to think computers help them do better in school" (Weinman & Haag, 1999). Career path projections for the 21st century, however, consistently point to required aptitude and fluency with technology beyond word processing and data entry. Sixty percent of jobs are reported to require skills with information technology. These jobs tend to pay 10-15% more than similar jobs that do not require such skills.

Dr. Cornelia Brunner, Associate Director of the Center for Children and Technology, is part of the Bank Street College of Education in New York City. Brunner has been involved in the research, production and teaching of educational technology for 30 years. She has taught experimental courses at Bank Street College and the Media Workshop in New York in which teachers learn how to integrate technology into their curriculum and how to write their own educational programs. Brunner serves on a national commission sponsored by the American Association of University Women, to examine the differences in the way girls and boys accept and use computer-based technology and what strategies teachers can use to ensure equity in the classroom.

According to Dr. Brunner (1999 Merrow Report), young women may not be aware of higher level technology opportunities, "but I think there's also another way to think about this. There's a good reason why young women are less likely to go into the kinds of classes that teach them those skills. It has to do both with how the classes are taught and the extent to which they make any effort whatsoever to address the kind of stuff that actually interests young women. The kind of research that we have been doing for the last decade shows over and over again that young women are very interested in technology. But they're interested in its function and what it can do in a social or a natural surround, rather than in the machines themselves. All the emphasis on technology meaning machine-related skills is something that keeps young women away from the field. What would invite them in is a more complex discussion of the functions of technology in society."

According to Jane Healy, author of Failure to Connect, the gap isn't all bad. She admits girls particularly can benefit from the software simulations that help with math and science learning and help them master more difficult concepts. "Because it makes it more visual, it makes it more concrete for them. We see that being true in the eighth grade at least." But she goes on to add, "we're not too sure about earlier grades. There hasn't been much very convincing evidence, frankly, that what kids are doing on computers at this point is actually helping their academic learning (except the usual word processing and the general assist to kids who have various kinds of problems with handwriting and spelling, what have you). I would really like to see research going on into how we can use this technology to develop brains of both boys and girls instead of what I saw when I was researching Failure to Connect. I went out to schools and I really saw appalling misuses of this tremendous potential. Very, very expensive machines being used basically for either word processing or game playing." As a self-proclaimed "technology skeptic," Healy feels "the gender gap exists, although it may be getting better, because we're beginning to realize that girls may have different interests than what fascinates boys in video games, for example." Healy believes that given the way computers are used in schools and at home, coupled with whatever we don't know about the way computers affect kids' minds, "maybe girls are better of without it at this point."

Libby Black, BVSD Internet specialist, agrees that we need to know more about how computers and kids minds interact, but disagrees with Healy on some points. "There are areas where we see computers playing vital roles for young children. This is especially true in the areas of reading and writing, presentations and supporting children with special needs. Leaving girls out at an early age can exacerbate the technology gender gap that grows larger as girls grow older. What we need to do is use technology in ways that appeal to girls."

The research bears this out, Brunner says. "There is this recognition that women and girls really want something quite different from technology. The exciting thing about the current state of the technology is that what girls actually want from it, which is the ability to connect, communicate, collaborate and integrate their school and home lives and things like that, are being made increasingly possible. More and more schools actually think of using this technology as a medium in which children converse with each other, with adults, with mentors, and in which they express complex ideas. This is different from the notion that technology is really there to be a kind of intelligent tutor when it comes to academic subjects."

Milgram adds, "when technology classes are redesigned in a way that they appeal not just to the so-called techno-nerd but to everyone else, you'll see an increase of females. For example, Carnegie Mellon University in 1995 had only 8 percent females in their freshman computer science class." In 1999, after redesigning the class to make it more appealing to females and marketing more to women, enrollment is up to 37%.

Brunner, in response to Healy's concerns says that "technology is sometimes used to sort of rectify the worst aspects of our school system, more drilling practice in rote memorization and things like that, when really the potential of the technology is to allow kids to do much more meaningful work, to share it with each other, to express themselves in new ways, and to think more deeply because they now have resources available they never had before. That's the promise of the technology. But it requires an enormous amount of staff development, time, effort and money." Charles Pillar, in MacWorld, September, 1992, cautioned that "those who cannot claim computers as their own tool for exploring the world never grasp the power of technology. Once out of school, they are relegated to low-wage jobs where they may operate electronic cash registers or bar-code readers. They may catch on as data entry clerks, typing page after page in deadly monotony. They are controlled by technology as adults ­ just as drill and practice routines controlled them as students."

The Merrow Report also explores the gap between boys' lower achievement in reading and writing and that of girls, still seen in SAT scores and other measures of literacy achievement. Brunner points out that "technology can help with some of these literacy problems, both for adults and for kids of all ages. But we have to make sure that we understand that the kind of reading and writing that goes on via this technology is very meaningful and can be very powerful, even though it doesn't look quite as respectable to us as book reading and paper writing does. But in fact an enormous amount of reading and writing actually goes on."

So when does the technology gap actually appear? Brunner, in her research, says the earliest they have been able to track it is in middle elementary school. Three different aspects seen in the early grades are: the ways in which these young people feel about technology, what they imagine about technology, and the kinds of objects they invent when they think about inventing future technologies. She reports that there is a remarkably consistent difference in the way girls and boys think about that. "We've only tracked it to the middle of elementary school years, maybe third, fourth grade, which doesn't mean it doesn't exist earlier, we just haven't looked."

Milgram doesn't find it surprising that it appears very early on. "The reason for that is most of the images that we see of who uses technology, whether it be career exploration, use of the computer labs, or if you're in a high school, those in that computer classroom are primarily male. I think that those images are not lost on the female students of all ages, or young women. I had a maker of a video on computer careers send it to me to evaluate. There were nine role models, and seven of them were male. Of the two females, one was in the traditionally female computer occupation of data entry."

Brunner asks us to consider that by and large, many women, even women who are professionals in this technological domain, are interested in different aspects of the technology. Technology isn't just one thing. The kinds of women she interviewed, for instance, who are very sophisticated technologists, still by and large, were more interested in thinking about the function of the technology than thinking about the machine itself. It is really looking at technology in a wider social context that interests women, she asserts. In most of the kinds of school-related technology courses that are offered young people, that is not part of the course. The course is essentially about the machine. How to use it, how to make it do things, rather than about the function of all of this in the larger social world. The courses themselves appear to be male oriented. "They're oriented toward a particular perspective in which technology is really something that extends your powers, that makes it possible for you to have a greater effect on the world. That is in itself something that a lot of women consider problematic, not bad, but problematic."

Milgram adds, "I would like to point out that although secondary schools are predominantly taught by females, the technology teachers are predominantly male. If you have males teaching these classes who themselves are thinking in this way, then it's not surprising that they're not as appealing to female students. I have had female computer technology instructors tell me that they know that they teach the course differently. Some of this thinking and problem solving is different, and it helps to make it more accessible to the majority of female students who think about thinking in a little bit different way." In BVSD's secondary applied technology program, there are 2 female and 8 male instructors. These courses are structured through problem-solving, but much of the content is fundamentally science based. Len Scrogan, district technology specialist, actively recruits, but finds it difficult to sign women on for these teaching positions. He believes this shortage is concrete evidence of the gender gap not only in technology but also in math and science. "Only 16% of graduates in design engineering programs are women. This makes recruiting women a challenge."

On the other hand, BVSD middle school "computer teachers" are evenly distributed across the district - five men and five women. "It's interesting," comments Libby Black, "that these classes are more application based and less hard-core technology. The computers are used as tools and not as much for programming."

Merrow asked, "does this gap cut across class and racial lines in the US?" Brunner responds, that, "at least in our research, it does."

Computer technology has been touted as "a powerful tool to narrow the gap between rich and poor students" (Weinman & Haag, 1999). That said, current research shows that Caucasian households are still more than twice as likely to own a computer as African American households. Brunner acknowledges that, "as far as we're concerned, there are two levels to access. One of them is literally access to the machines themselves. BVSD technology instructor Richard Keep agrees, reporting that availability of enough equipment to go around at Centaurus plays a major role in the number of girls using technology.

Increasingly kids of all colors are getting more access through the school system, though clearly not enough, Brunner continues. "There are some giveaway programs and things like that, but that in itself doesn't constitute full access. Full access really means that there's stuff on there that is interesting for you to do, that helps you think about interesting things, and that invites you in. So even if you have a machine but nothing on the machine is particularly inviting, you still don't have real access. And it's that second kind of access that is missing by and large when it comes to minority children. So much of the stuff that they're shown through this technology is not directly relevant to their interests or their lives."

Jamie Ward, an advocate for children of color in technology, points out, "one of the things that I have found when I talk to people who are working in inner-city communities with African American and Hispanic girls, is that it seems as though the current focus on developing girl's software is often Euro-centric in its design and marketing. It's based on research that uncovers the desires and the preferences and the appeal of this stuff to White middle-class girls." Brunner adds that "this is not even White urban girls or middle-class girls. It's primarily to suburban White middle-class girls."

Ward and Brunner suggest there is a need to figure out how to tap those characteristics that might be of specific appeal to or preferred by girls of color and girls with linguistic differences. "It is really important to connect girls that are African American, that are Latina, that are Asian, with the Internet resources that are available in those ethnic communities. For example, there is a website called BlackGeeks Online that is focused on and was developed to make it 'cool' for African Americans to be involved in the Internet. There is also a large Latino Net as well. It is important for girls of color that they be connected not only to the gender resources that are available, such as GirlGeeks Online, but also to the many minority resources that will speak to them."

Ward has been surveying educators who have computers in their classroom, social service agencies, and community centers and asking if they're seeing gender differences. She reports that boys seem to be more attracted to computers and playing on the computers than girls among the urban, African American, and Hispanic populations that she has inquired about. It is also true, though, that for those girls who are attracted to the computer, they are passionately so. "I'm told by educators that when the computers are there, these Black girls are motivated, they're excited about getting in there and playing with the keyboard, testing out the software, seeing what this baby can do. They are not holding back at all. I think that part of that comes out of these particular individual girls' strong sense of self and a belief that they can make a difference and do something that they really want to do." She adds there is also "a kind of different gender training (in some girls of color) in which a certain kind of feminine helplessness that some girls have been trained to at least pretend to have isn't quite as prominent. It is really okay to be competent and to make something happen. And I think a lot of young Black women have a much greater sense of their own power in relation to the world."

The President's 1997 Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology found that "although girls made 50% greater use of computers for word processing than their male classmates, they accounted for only 26% of all elective computer use before and after school, and for only 20% of all in-school computer-based game-playing activities." In Milgram's Futures Study, she found in classrooms where there is a computer lab, for example, the boys rush to the machines, and the girls hold back. Most young women, it is found, simply are not going to fight to get to use the computer. Boys, she believes, are more aggressive when it comes to things like use of equipment, but there are teaching techniques that can be incorporated into the classroom that will enable the girls to get an opportunity to use the equipment and to have access. One way to look at this is that girls need to use computers in some meaningful context. If a girl is in the middle of a project, there are moments when she needs the computer to do something, and there are other times when she doesn't need the computer. Boys, according to the study, will gravitate to the computer even when they don't need it because they just like the object, and they like sitting with it and playing with it, and that makes a huge difference. "If we instruct the class that girls are using computers for a meaningful reason and when they need it, they get access to it, they will use it," says Milgram.

Denise Nicoletti, Professor of Engineering at Wooster Polytechnic Institute is director of a program for seventh grade girls in engineering. In her experience, "the way to get girls into the math, science and computer courses is by having a project that they do, a real project for a community group. So whether it's AIDS Project Wooster or a daycare center, they get to do an engineering project. They see that they need math, science and computers. Then we help them make sure that they get into those classes, rather than simply telling them that it's something that they need to do for the future. We found that is a pretty effective way of getting around that problem."

Scott Dixon, technology instructor at Centennial MS believes that competition for electives enrollment along with boys' greater interest in the mechanics of the technology is why girls' participation in computer classes still hovers at around 20%. He points out, however, that girls comprise 50% of Vocal Point students, the on-line newspaper, and Computer Club . Ten years ago, though, no girls were in the club. Through active recruitment, using technology for communication, and facilitating social group involvement, numbers have increased to today's equity in both activities.

Brunner agrees with these interventions. " I think it's exactly what's needed in relation to technology. That it has to be very clear that just the same way you can be a very good driver without necessarily knowing how the motor works of your car, you can do all kinds of meaningful computer-related work without necessarily being interested in programming or in the machine itself."

Although controversial, Brunner adds there is evidence that when it comes to things like math, science, and technology, single sex classes are very powerful, for girls in particular. "It allows them to really use these technologies and math and science in a way that make sense to them, without having to compete with the other half as it were." Milgram adds, "that if you review the literature, the programs that have worked the best have been ones that have been female specific. And that's really because they do things like have female role models, they proactively recruit young women, they include the kinds of contextual learning experiences that Cornelia's been talking about. But, there's no reason that those principles cannot be incorporated into coed classrooms." She goes on to describe an article in The New York Times about an all-girls school in Palo Alto, where the girls "went into a technology competition and essentially 'cleaned the boys' clocks.' They took first and third. But they had the advantage of the single sex education to start with."

The Merrow Report participants and the Educational Leadership article authors agree that professional development is a huge issue. In addition to the other points addressed, they believe schools of education are just barely beginning to integrate technology into their own course offerings, so they're not developing any models for young teachers on how to integrate technology intelligently and meaningfully into their curriculum. "That's a huge problem," says Brunner. "Some feel resentment that, already in some ways overburdened with all kinds of new standards and all kinds of new requirements, now they're supposed to integrate technology as well. And really nobody is showing them how to do that well."

Making video and computer games for girls that require a more sophisticated kind of thinking is a method that would invite young women in, because it's more involved with social context. A simple kind of action, like shooting, isn't sufficient to interest girls, says Brunner. That requires more complicated programming for the games and more complicated pedagogical methods in instruction. That brings back the issue of staff development. In order to spread these models teachers are needed who feel really comfortable not just teaching a specific subject matter, but inviting complex interesting conversations to happen.

A 1995 study of mathematics software found that of gender-identifiable characters, only 12% were female. Further study in 1997 found that in educational software, females are portrayed as passive in the stereotypical roles of mothers and princesses (Durham & Brownlow, Journal of Science Education and Technology, June, 1997). Activities such as Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? appeal equally to both boys and girls, but Simm City is more likely to capture the interest of boys. Simm Town, where you can actually look inside and see what the "little critters" are doing (although for a younger age group), is more gender neutral. Simm City, it is said, added the function of Godzilla's destruction so it would appeal more to boys. Without that feature, they felt it was balancing budgets and building homes and good schools and that sort of thing. "In truth, the boys like that every now and then you can just devastate the entire city." Violent games are popular and a lot of companies in the industry really support that element of play, because they know that formula works for boys. But they don't know the formula that works for girls. Merrow asked, "And is that because they're boys? It's boys in charge?" Milgram says, "yes, that's a part of it." Her doctoral thesis showed that in the corporate world, most of the heads of the corporations that make the decision on product development and sales say, "build it for boys, because the boys will buy it. The girls might buy it. But if you build it for girls, the boys won't buy it. So don't build it for girls." This, too, sends the message that technology is for boys. Brunner challenges, "I really do believe that there's another point here, which is that if you make a game in which you win by racking up the greatest numbers of points, that's easy to do. If you make a game in which you have to achieve justice, that's much harder to do." Finally, she adds, "The development of this new technology into what is essentially a conversational medium, I think is the greatest promise for inviting young women into it." In summary, some of the barriers to equity in technology are lack of role models, accessibility, self confidence and self efficacy issues, gender based expectations, course structure and content, teacher training and professional development, and cultural identity.

Becky Whittenburg has been working in the field of gifted education for the past 15 years, and as the gifted education resource specialist for the Boulder Valley School District (Colorado) for the past four years. She has long had a special interest in issues around special populations in gifted eduction. The above article is excerpted from Gray Matters Volume 3, Issue 3, May, 2000.