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Where Do Female Computer Scientists Come From

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As someone who is mildly addicted to statistics and who has a degree in Sociology (really) I found this article in Fast Company very interesting on several levels. LinkedIn Wants To Help You Name Your New Baby/CEO It reports on common first names for CEOs of global companies – both male and female. But deep in the article I found this gem - Top Names of Female Engineers (U.S. only):

1. Kiran 2. Jun 3. Yi 4. Ming 5. Li 6. Priya 7. Irina 8. Olga 9. Marina 10. Elena

Nuessel offers: “Several are Asian, and as many as three appear to be Italian. It is, of course, not possible to determine more than that. It may suggest that some families are steering their children in a particular career path because this path (engineering) is desirable for its financial rewards and the social status that it bestows.”

I wonder what it would look like for software engineers or computer scientists. Of course I wonder what it would look like for men as well as women but I tend to think the list for female software engineers would look similar to the list above for engineers in general. I regularly hear stories of computer science and software engineering attracting more female students in the Middle East and Asia than in the US. I don’t see how falling behind in attracting women into to CS and software engineering can possibly be a good thing for the US. Eventually these smart, educated women engineers in other parts of the world are going to start staying home.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2011
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 28, 2011
    "as many as three appear to be Italian?" Irina, Olga, Marina, and Elena are all Russian names.

  • Anonymous
    April 29, 2011
    I was thinking there were a bunch of Russian names. I don't think they asked all the right people to categorize those names.

  • Anonymous
    May 01, 2011
    The comment has been removed