Friday, 5 October 2012

Female CS PhD’s research areas

I was surprised by these data. Why would databases have one of the highest percentages of women? Why would graphics and visualization have one of the lowest? My guess is that it doesn’t have to do with features of the area and the match to women’s concerns and interests, but instead, is about how welcoming the culture of the field is to women.

The overall percent of women receiving PhDs in computing was 20.3%, but this representation is unevenly distributed across specialty areas. Table 1 shows numbers and percentages of specialty area by gender over the four years. Representation as measured by the percentage of graduates within a specialty who are women is one measure of women’s participation; raw numbers of women completing PhDs in a specialty is another. Because there are higher numbers of students graduating with specialties in Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering, these areas have relatively high total numbers of women even though the percent of women in these areas is about average.

Highest Representation of Women (% within area): Information Science (38%), Human-Computer Interaction (36%), and Databases/Information Retrieval (26%). Highest Numbers of Women: Artificial Intelligence, Databases/Information Retrieval, and Software Engineering Lowest Representation of Women (% within area): Programming Languages/Compilers, Operating Systems, and Graphics/Visualization (all 14%).

Deepa Singh
Business Developer
Email Id:-deepa.singh@soarlogic.com

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