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.
Exciting inventions, innovative technology, human interaction, and intriguing politics fill computing history. However, the recorded history is mainly composed of male achievements and involvements, even though women have played substantial roles. This situation is not unusual. Most science fields are notorious for excluding, undervaluing, or overlooking the accomplishments of their female scientists [1, 16, 17, 22]. As J.A.N. Lee points out, it is up to the historians and others to remedy this imbalance (see this issue [14]). Some steps have been taken towards this goal through publishing biographies on women in technology [2, 5, 6, 8, 12, 13, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24], also see this issue [7], and through honoring the pioneers with various awards such as the GHC'97 Pioneering Awards (Figure 1), the WITI Hall of Fame, and the AWC Lovelace Award. A few online sites contain biographies of women in technology, shown in Table 1 below. However, even with these resources, many women who have contributed significantly to computer science are still to be discovered.
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