JasonB wrote:
The strange thing is that there are far more male graduates than female. I don't know where the excess male graduates are going. But I don't see this as a "problem" that needs "solving" -- the problem really is that there aren't enough bright young people, irrespective of gender, who see CS & IT as an attractive career option, possibly due to all the media coverage of the outsourcing of IT jobs to India.
There's been some nice recent coverage on this on Ars lately, and I think overall the pieces end up echoing a similar sentiment:
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/200 ... ogress.ars
"...women are doing as well or better than their male counterparts at various stages in academic careers. Women are hired and granted tenure at a rate equal to, or slightly greater than, their male counterparts. While the acceptance and transition rates are comparable, however, women are still underrepresented at all levels due to the small number of women applying for these positions..."
There was a second article on Ars that I couldn't find because their search engine is down as usual, but it said something about females simply being less attracted by percentage than males to the technical field due to social perception about the field being boring (sitting in front of the keyboard and typing all day etc).