ATLAS | NCWIT cited in Wall Street Journal

NCWIT offers perspective about new Barbie to Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal cited NCWIT statistics about the declining number of women earning computer science degrees in an April 9 page one story about the upcoming release of a new computer engineer Barbie doll.

The newspaper cited NCWIT statistics that stated that only 18% of computer science degrees were awarded to women in 2008, down from 37% in 1985.

A companion article in the Journal’s “Digits” blog extensively quoted NCWIT’s Catherine Ashcraft about the inaccurate image of women and computer science and the lack of female role models and mentors.

“Girls get subtle messages from all sorts of places — the media, popular culture, parents, teachers, school counselors, other authority figures — that computer science isn’t really ‘something girls do,’” Ashcraft was quoted as saying.

The Wall Street Journal said a campaign by female computer engineers influenced a Mattel company Web site vote on which career a new Barbie doll should represent. See: http://x2c.eu/0h and http://x2c.eu/0i.