By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Over the last two decades, the computer science industry has seen almost a mass exodus of women – while other science fields have seen the number of jobs held by women rise significantly.

According to a new report by the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), the percentage of computer-related jobs held by women has declined steadily from its high of 36% in 1991, to just above 25% in 2008.

Dr. Catherine Ashcraft, co-author (with Sarah Blithe) of Women in IT: The Facts, explained that there are a number of reasons for the decline:

• the dot-com burst in the late ’90s leading to a perception that there aren’t any jobs in the field
• a perception that technology and computer-related jobs have been outsourced to people in countries outside the US
• a misunderstanding about what the field really is
• higher visibility of other science fields
• and an image that these jobs are “nerdy or geeky”

But it’s not just a decline in the number of women entering the field – women are leaving jobs in the technology field at a startling rate.

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

In a recent blog post, Clay Shirky, a world-famous new media scholar and consultant, wrote, “not enough women have what it takes to behave like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks.”

This is bad for women, he reasons, because, “people who don’t raise their hands don’t get called on, and people who raise their hands timidly get called on less. Some of this is because assertive people get noticed more easily, but some of it is because raising your hand is itself a high-cost signal that you are willing to risk public failure in order to try something.”

Men, on the other hand, seem to have less of a problem with stretching the facts in order to promote themselves. “There is no upper limit to the risks men are willing to take in order to succeed, and if there is an upper limit for women, they will succeed less.”