by, for, and about women in science, technology, engineering, & math

Business Week has a great article on Maria Klawe, Harvey Mudd college president, who has more than tripled the number of women in CS at the school since taking the job in 2006. She revamped the computer science curriculum, splitting what had previously been one introductory course into three (which I think is a great idea — I’ve written before about my experience in introductory CS), one for beginners, one for programmers with some experience, and one designed for (non-computer) scientists. Maybe this is the beginning of a new trend, and we’ll see other CS departments revamping their curricula over the next few years. I hope so — making CS more accessible as a major to a variety of students is a benefit, of course, but it’s also great to teach non-CS students some of the basics of computing, since it’s nearly impossible to avoid using computers in your work in some capacity.

ThinkProgress reports a heartening statistic: the increase in the number of women getting doctoral degrees over the past 30 years. The article suggests that this could mean more female professors for girls entering college in the near future, but unfortunately, as a commenter points out, women drop out of the STEM pipeline at every level, and an increase in women getting doctorates translates into a much smaller increase in women taking roles as professors. Still, it’s a promising trend!

• This fall, Stanford is offering a free online course in databases — a great choice for anyone interested in programming but without much database experience, since database design is a key part of many real-world programming applications.
• SingPath is a set of free online programming exercises in a variety of languages, starting from the absolute basics; a great way for a beginning programmer to get started or for a more experienced programmer to learn a new language.
• Could the next Steve Jobs be a woman? Pricilla Oppenheimer thinks so.
• Ohio LinuxFest is looking for volunteers to help with registration, staffing their bookstore, and more.
• Programmer Lindsey Bieda has a well-researched blog post refuting the claim that the lack of women in programming is not a bug. She also has a followup post with some action steps to help encourage new programmers.
• Emma Mulqueeny, who runs the hack day program Rewired State, posts about the need to start teaching kids to program at younger ages to avoid the effects of the social stereotypes that discourage teenage girls from programming. She also has a followup post with specific tools and techniques that are useful for teaching programming to younger students.
• Here’s a video profile of an MIT student who built her own airplane!
• Anna Lewis writes in the Washington Post about the original “computers” and computer programmers — mostly women — and how we can reverse the decline in women’s participating in computing that’s occurred since the early days.
• Programmer Vanessa Hurst discusses the opportunity for women in technology and the need for diversity, collaboration, and inclusion in software development.

• The Male Programmer Privilege Checklist has been around for a while, but now there’s an editable version on the Geek Feminism Wiki. A worthwhile read, especially for male programmers who’d like to be more aware of how their experience differs from women’s.
• Femmeonomics is seeking submissions for a list of 50 women to watch in tech — submit yourself or another woman for the list (deadline September 16)!
• AT&T is trying to track down the women engineers featured in a recruitment film made in 1975. Watch the film for a look at the women working in technology in the 70s!
• Chemist Piper Klemm writes in Ms. Magazine’s blog about hosting a WikiWomen party — in response to the statistic that only 13% of Wikipedia contributors are women, Klemm invited four friends, also chemists, to spend time together and share some of their expertise with the wiki-reading world.
• The Fog Creek blog has an interesting story looking at historical trends of women in computing (when computers first appeared on the scene, the field was female-dominated; as the field of computing grew in size and prestige, the percentage of women dropped a lot; and according to the blog, the numbers have been going up in the past few years!) and interviewing the only woman currently on Fog Creek’s technical staff.
• In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Nancy Linde talks about how groups looking to attract young women to science and technology need to learn to use marketing techniques to refine their approach.

Share your own links for women in STEM in the comments!

• At Flickr, you can now browse or add your image to the group This is What a Computer Scientist Looks Like, featuring images of contemporary computer scientists, mostly women.
• The Anita Borg Institute has posted videos of the winners of their 2011 Women of Vision award: Chieko Asakawa, Mary Lou Jepsen, and Karen Panetta
• Futurity discusses subtle (and probably unintentional) gendering in job ads through the use of words like “competitive”/“dominant” (coded male) or “compassionate”/“nurturing” (coded female).
• Under The Microscope posts about a high school Women in Technology club that increased retention of girls in the computer science program by providing a social support network.
• Gail at The Female Perspective of Computer Science discusses the ways computer science is relevant to other academic realms.

In addition to blogs and other public online resources, one of the great ways the internet can support women in technology is through mailing lists. Lists have the advantage that your message asking for advice or suggesting a meetup goes directly into people’s inboxes — but even more importantly, lists and the messages on them can be private, so you can complain about a co-worker or ask about a delicate situation on a private mailing list and feel safe saying things you wouldn’t want to share on a public blog. Women-only or women-primarily lists are also great places to ask technical questions with less fear of embarrassment for asking something that might be obvious to someone with more experience (most of these lists have policies explicitly supporting “newbie” questions and requiring a polite, friendly attitude from anyone who responds).

Here are some of the lists I’m on:

• Systers — this list has been around since it was founded by Anita Borg in 1987(!). It’s a big list with a lot of members. People on the list share job offers, ask for advice, or just rant about their experiences. Systers is part of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, and in addition to running the mailing list, sponsors the Pass-It-On Awards (which are funded by donations from members).

• Linuxchix — this organization for women interested in Linux/free/open-source software (motto: “Be polite. Be helpful.”) has several lists with different purposes. Grrls-only is a private, non-archived list only for women (which makes it particularly suitable for discussing sensitive issues); to join the list you have to confirm that you are a woman and interested in Linux. Part of the point of this list is to provide a resource for women trying to learn more about Linux to ask questions without encountering the condescension or sexism that Linux-using men in other fora are sometimes prone to. Men are welcome in the other LinuxChix lists, like Programming or Techtalk, but the lists will still be more women-dominated than your average technical mailing list.

• Devchix — this list is specifically for women who are programmers (while the other lists above are broader in scope, encompassing fields like system administration or simply using Linux). There are a lot of vocal members who are Ruby programmers, but the list isn’t Ruby-exclusive and you can probably find “chix” on there who use whatever your language of choice is. Devchix also has a group blog on technical issues.

I don’t know if there are similar lists available for women in other areas of STEM — if you’re in a non-computing field, please share your experiences with mailing lists in the comments!