Briana Berger: high school junior in Florida
Julia Hu: high school junior in New York
Sunny Wu: sophomore at Stanford University
Priya Ganesan: senior at Stanford University
Julie Black: CTO at Evidation Health, B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science
Cynthia Lee: lecturer at Stanford University, Ph.D. in Computer Science
Here are their stories, continued.
“Why do you think there aren’t as many girls in high school or college that go into CS?”
Briana: “Personally — in high school, there [are] a lot of social problems and stereotypes and you try to categorize yourself into that. We don’t want our social standings to go down. There aren’t many classes at high schools for CS, so there isn’t a big opportunity to try. People can’t join the class without saying, ‘I’m the only person like me in the room,’ which isn’t a good feeling.”
Julia: “Well, for me, being the only girl out of a few girls in the class just motivates me further, and I want to work harder to master the concepts and show that just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I’m not as good at it. I was the only one in my general friend group interested in tech. Many of my friends haven’t had the exposure that I’ve had; they’re still under the impression that tech is sitting in cubicle in a 9–5 job, which isn’t that appealing.”
Sunny: “CS and other STEM fields have traditionally been male-dominated, and I think it can be hard for girls to feel included and feel like they have something worth contributing. When I was in elementary school, my mom tutored me in math and encouraged me to participate in math competitions starting from fourth grade. However, I think my self-confidence in math gradually diminished after joining a competitive math team in 7th and 8th grade. I was one of three or four girls each year selected to be on the team that trained for competitions, and the other dozen or so students were all guys. While it was an honor to be one of the top female ‘mathletes’ in my school, I often felt excluded by my male teammates. They never did anything discriminating, but they simply were able to solve problems more quickly than I could, and I often felt that I wasn’t needed on the team. There was one team competition in which I solved a problem only to realize that my male teammates had already figured that problem out. They went on to complete the remaining problems, none of which I was able to solve myself or contribute to solutions. I think this was one reason why I deviated from mathematics throughout high school; I no longer felt valued in this field.
“Right now, I’m thankful that I’ve realized that I do have potential to pursue and succeed in STEM fields if I want to. If not for my mom training me in math at a young age and building that foundation from early on, I’m not sure that I would have the logic and mental capabilities now to feel like I have the potential to succeed in CS. I think it’s so important to do for young girls across the country what my mom did for me: introduce STEM fields to them at a young age. In this way, even if they choose to explore other academic realms throughout their primary and secondary education, they will at least have a foundation in STEM and have that potential and confidence to pursue [STEM] if they ever choose to, and they can believe that they have something valuable to contribute.”
Julie: “That’s a really hard one — there [are] tons of factors. I think it starts early. Girls need to be exposed to science, technology, and engineering and encouraged to pursue degrees and careers in these fields. I was lucky and went to an all-girls high school where nothing was socially ‘off-limits’ for girls. I explored programming, engineering, and all sorts of advanced math and science classes without thinking twice about gender diversity.”
“Imagine you had all the time, money, and resources in the world. If you could do anything to get more girls interested in CS, what would you do?”
Julia: “Make a computer science course mandatory in schools. If the federal government can make this a thing, there would be no gender gap in high school computer science classes.”
Cynthia: “In a perfect world, every girl and every child would have one-on-one interaction with an appropriate role model. In politics or religion or any area, a significant changing of minds only really happens when one person talks to one person. More widespread introduction of computer science into the core, required curriculum of K-12 would be a good real-world approximation of that. When K-12 CS programs are opt-in or only available at some schools, it damages the demographic diversity of the field by introducing a selection bias.”
