Female Pursuit of Computer Science with Jennifer Wang

Google researcher Jennifer Wang co-wrote a paper called “Gender Differences in Factors Influencing Pursuit of Computer Science and Related Fields”. The paper focuses on a survey of 1700 high school and college students, and takes a statistical approach to understanding why women are not pursuing computer science.

In our conversation, Jennifer talks about the two influences that lead to fewer women in computer science: encouragement and exposure. The problem of encouragement: women often do not receive encouragement to go into computer science. The problem of exposure: women are often unaware that computer science even exists. On this episode, we explore the roots of these problems, and other results of her demographic study of young students.

Jeff