International Perspective of Women and Computer Science Elizabeth S. Adams Computer Science Department James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA. 22807 adamses@jmu.edu Orit Hazzan (moderator) Department of Education in Technology & Science Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Haifa, Israel 32000 oritha@tx.technion.ac.il Hrafn Loftsson Reykjavik University Department of Computer Science IS-103 Reykjavik, Iceland hrafn@ru.is Alison Young Department of Computing & Information Technology UNITEC Auckland, New Zealand ayoung@unitec.ac.nz Categories and Subject Descriptions: K.3 [Computers and Education] General Terms: Human Factors Keywords: women in computer science, gender, international perspective 1. Summary The topic of women in computer science has recently been getting more and more attention. The special issue of the SIGCSE Bulletin inroad (Volume 34, Number 2, published in June 2002) is one of the milestones that indicate this trend. However, a review of this special issue reveals that though the topic is examined from different angles, only one paper addresses it from an international point of view. By presenting statements derived from four countries on four different continents, our panel aims to highlight the topic from this multi- national perspective. Throughout the discussion with the audience we hope to identify common interests and to check whether an international agenda with respect to the topic can be formulated. 2. Panelist Position Statements Elizabeth S. Adams, USA For a long time, I have been concerned that although the women computer science majors I encountered were among the best students in my classes there were not enough of them. In discussions with colleagues at my institution, this was a common situation in almost all the science majors with the exception of biology. Two courses we created at James Madison University to attempt to understand why and to raise the consciousness of women on our campus are described in [3]. In recent years we have had more students wanting to major in computer science than we could comfortably handle. This semester, along with a number of other American institutions, we have seen a significant drop in the number of freshmen who indicate a desire to major in computer science. We are very concerned that this will further decrease the proportion of women CS majors. Recent research by J. McGrath Cohoon [2] examined the possible causes of female attrition in Virginia's 23 coeducational CS departments. She found that female students were retained in the major in the same proportion when a number of conditions held, among them women faculty, a stable department, a strong local market for graduates, sufficiently large number of female students in each class for them to support each other. Some of these factors are beyond our control. Others deserve our attention. Orit Hazzen, Israel In the 1990s, Israel emerged as a leading center for technology start-ups and innovation. In the hi-tech pick, with its about 3000 startups, and the highest number of engineers per capita in the world, the hi-tech sector comprised 15% of Israel’s overall economy and Israel had the third (after the U.S. and Canada) highest number of companies listed in Nasdaq. Currently, as a result of the worldwide crisis and the political situation in the Middle East, foreign investment in Israel decreased. However, quantitative data indicates that even in the hi-tech pick days women’s role in this niche was under representative. As a result we started a research its main aim is to explore why high-school girls and women in the universities and in the industry do not choose being computer scientists. The research is supported by two Technion funds (the Samuel Neaman Institute Fund and the Fund for the Promotion of Research at the Technion). At the moment our research focuses on the high-school population. Formal and informal data indicate that the percentages of the high-school girls who study computer science at the highest level of the matriculation exam remain relatively low. For example, in the years 1998, 1999 and 2000 the percentages of girls who took the highest level of the computer science matriculation exam was 26%, 27% and 29% respectively. Our activities aim to increase the number of girls who choose to learn in the highest level of the matriculation Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). SIGCSE’03, February 19-23, 2003, Reno, Nevada, USA. ACM 1-58113-648-X/03/0002. 45