But there remains a serious gap between the sexes in technology. In 1998, girls made up only 17 percent of the high school students who took the advanced placement exam in computer science. The gap persists through higher education and into the workplace. Women earn 18 percent of the doctorates in computer science in the United States, and only 12 percent of all engineering Ph.D.'s. Women make up nearly half the nation's work force, yet they account for just 22 percent of employed scientists and engineers.
Experts say the problem begins in adolescence.
As puberty takes hold, girls begin to lose the self-confidence that once helped them excel in math and science. Teachers collude in this process, education experts say, by failing to call on girls in class as frequently as they call on boys and by discouraging girls in other subtle ways. Ann Clarke, the Julia Morgan School's director and a veteran educator, said she had seen firsthand the tentativeness with which adolescent girls approached math when she had begun looking over the math tests she had given prospective students. Had boys been in Ms. Putnam's math class, Ms. Clarke said, the class would have been more frenetic. There's a different energy around girls.