Women Outnumber Men in Berkeley’s Intro to Computer Science

Here’s an exciting first which hopefully indicates a promising trend: This year women outnumber men in UC Berkeley’s introductory computer science course. The field  is vastly dominated by men, and the Berkeley course seems to be an exception, according to Tech Crunch. The difference is small–106 women to 104 men; yet the potential reasons why there is this rare lead provides invaluable insight into how to attract more women to computer science.

Overall, the number of women in the STEM world has been down since 1991. What is Berkeley doing right? Professor Dan Garcia, who taught the class last spring, attributes the increase to significantly more team-based project learning and increased opportunities for students to become teaching assistants. Tech Crunch provides interesting data on computer science’s gender gap overall. And Maria Konnikova for Big Think breaks down different approaches for understanding the gender gap in education and the workplace.

Image credit: Seattle Municipal Archives/Flickr