Although the Foundation convened the commission, in large part, because girls are alarmingly underrepresented in computer science and technology fields, we also recognized that there are much broader issues with regard to gender and technology. Women are roughly 20 percent of IT professionals. Women receive less than 28 percent of bachelor's degrees in computer science, down from a high of 37 percent in 1984.
Computer science is the only field in which women's participation has actually decreased over time.
Women make up just 9 percent of the recipients of engineering-related bachelor's degrees. For a text version of this audio file, see the Audio page.