Historical Context          Cultural Context          Pedagogical Context         Solutions         References      

The Gender Divide: Digital Equity Report

Despite the fact that teen girls score equally as high on computer aptitude tests as boys, they perceive themselves as having little facility with technology; Colley and Combert report only 23% of tested girls rate themselves highly compared to nearly 50% of boys (as cited in Steele, 2006). A study by Hannover & Kessels in 2004 looks to the role that prototype theory plays in career selection for adolescents; people create mental models of a person in a particular occupation. These perceptions, formed by gender cultural norms, seem to affect the paucity of women in the field of technology. Since 1983, according to Gilbert, the percentage of young women who major in Computer Science in the United States has steadily declined (as cited in Steele, 2006):

In stark contrast, women comprise 45% of computer science students in Northern Europe; while Malaysia and other Asian countries boast more women than men in the Information Technology (IT) field (Rommes, Overbeek, Scholte, Engels, & Kemp, 2008). This hardly seems an issue until we delve deeper to discover that this disparity results, obviously not from biology, but directly from deep rooted cultural beliefs that perpetuate harmful stereotypes. These misperceptions limit the options that girls perceive they have in life and provide the foundation for fostering the same pernicious beliefs in the classroom. By encouraging girls to buck prevailing conceptions to explore Computer Science as a career, we're one step closer to breaking through barriers of this divide. We'll explore the historical, cultural, and pedagogical contexts and learn how they feed off one another. Fortunately, the issue is acknowledged as a serious divide and numerous resources exist for educators to encourage girls to realize their fullest potential.

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