BU Today: Women Have Been Shut Out of Computer and Data Science. BU Is Opening the Door
Excerpt from BU Today | By: Molly Callahan | November 15, 2024 | Photo: Cydney Scott
Across the United States, women make up roughly half the workforce and roughly half the population. But, zoom in on the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math), and it’s a starkly different story. In data science, for example, only about 15 to 20 percent of professionals in the field are women.
It’s a trend that cuts across all levels of employment in these fields: less than 20 percent of cutting-edge start-ups are created by a founding team that includes a woman, and just 3 percent of those founding teams are composed entirely of women. The same holds true for many higher education programs. Women’s shares of computer science degrees peaked in the 1980s, around 35 percent, during the early days of Microsoft and Apple, then dropped precipitously—by 2020, it was closer to 20 percent.
Boston University, however, is bucking this trend. The University’s Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences (CDS), which launched in 2021, has been uniquely successful in recruiting—and retaining—women in the field. Women made up 46 percent of its inaugural class, and it’s grown from there. Forty-seven percent of the Class of 2028 are women.
Emma Steel (CAS’25, CDS’25), a senior in CDS, can easily recall being one of the only women in her Florida high school computer science classes. Being at BU, she says, “is refreshing—and really exciting.”
Azer Bestavros, associate provost for computing and data sciences, frames it as a societal benefit: “Think about it: Women are half of the population, and half of our brain power, right? So, as a society, we will do far better if we get the best brains to work on the most pressing problems.”