An ACM-W literature review on women in computing

Abstract

The pipeline shrinkage problem for women in computer science is a well-known and documented phenomenon where the ratio of women to men involved in computing shrinks dramatically from early student years to working years [19, 22, 23, 32, 42, 93, 112], also see this issue [24]. During the last decade, considerable research ensued to understand the reasons behind the existence of the shrinking pipeline and in some cases to take action to increase the numbers of women in computing. Through the work of a National Science Foundation funded project [56], ACM's Committee on Women in Computing (ACM-W) has taken a first step towards pulling this research together. A large number of articles was gathered and processed on the topic of women in computing and the shrinking pipeline. The committee created a publicly available online database to organize the references of this body of work by topic, author, and reference information. The database, constantly being updated, is accessible through ACM-W's website 〈http://www.acm.org/women〉. A final report is also available via the ACM-W website which covers current statistics on women in computing, summaries of the literature in the database, and a set of recommendations.The following discussion is a brief synopsis of a subset of the literature review as of August 2001. In addition, you can find statistics on women in computing and recommendations throughout this special issue.