Tides are turning in favour of women in tech. Here’s why.

This article is co-authored by Iris Leung.

Photo credit: startupstockphotos.com

Despite the constant lamenting of low female-to-male ratio in the tech industry, the poor representation of women in technical roles hasn’t always been the case. According to some NPR research, some of the world’s computing pioneers were women. And for a while, there were actually more women studying computer science than men.

But ever since personal computers arrived in American homes, that number began to plummet. This was thanks to the notion that computers were for boys, so male students naturally had a leg up because they had the opportunity to learn programming languages in their spare time.

According to Girls Who Code, 74 percent of young girls in the US are interested in STEM fields and computer science, but by the time they make a decision about their academic or professional careers, a shifts occurs.

Today, only 18 percent of undergraduate computer science degrees and 26 percent of jobs in this space are held by women. The reason for this might be a pipeline problem, and this TechCrunch article suggests that women may be losing inspiration at this key stage of their career — which could be a lack of resources or mentorship.

While the US-focused research on the topic provides a global context, our research team wanted to see if the same pipeline issues were affecting computer science (CS) programs in Asia.

In collaboration with 60 universities, we extracted the number of female students in undergraduate computer science programs across Asia in 2015, and this is what we found.

Female programmers in universities

Out of the surveyed schools, one university has reported a majority percentage of female students in their CS program. In Malaysia, the Universiti Teknologi Petronas enrolled 200 students last year with 120 of them (60 percent) female.

Other than that, other schools came fairly close to the 50 percent mark in terms of enrolment, with both Chang Gung University in Taiwan and Mahidol University in Thailand enrolling 48 percent female students. Chang Gung accepted 179 women out of 373, while Mahidol enrolled 432 out of 892 respectively.

On the other end of the spectrum, universities in India and Japan has reported some of the lowest numbers in terms of female representation in computer science programs. Out of 89 students at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, only 2 are women (2 percent). And at Hiroshima University in Japan, only 5 out of 142 students are female, which makes up just 4 percent.

In South Korea, the numbers are just as grim, as the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology enrols just 17 women among 345 CS students (5 percent). Also at 5 percent enrolment is the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, where only 5 out of 110 students are women.

As investors in Southeast Asian tech companies, Monk’s Hill Ventures is naturally in staunch support of women in STEM — particularly in the fields of computer science. We believe not only in equal access but also that gender imbalance within the tech industry will eventually lead to a lot of missed opportunities in the long run.

While this is not to say that those without a technical background won’t make excellent tech entrepreneurs, we do believe that women with CS backgrounds are very well-equipped in building and leading technology startup companies.

Inspiring women entrepreneurs with CS background

Mission to encourage more women to enter STEM disciplines