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Written by Oliver Staley for Quartz

As US universities struggle to encourage women to study computer science, one small college is having uncommon success attracting them to the field.

Harvey Mudd College, in Claremont, California, has been an outlier in producing female programmers for a decade. This year, for the first time, more women than men graduated with a degree in computer science. Nationally, about 16% of undergraduate computer-science majors are women. At Harvey Mudd, that figure is 55%. (It falls to 49% when joint majors are included.)

Due to a new publication of the German Federal Statistical Office the share of women on the german professorate has increased from 14 to 23 percent between the years 2005-2015. The whole amonut of the professorate has risen in 10 years about 22 percent. In the same time period the scientific and artistic personnel icreased by 61 percent. 

Aus der Veröffentlichung der Arbeitsunterlage "Personal an Hochschulen, vorläufiges Ergebnis 2015" des Statistischen Bundesamt (Destatis) geht hervor, dass der Frauenanteil in der Professorenschaft 2015 auf 23 Prozent gestiegen ist. Der Frauenanteil innerhalb der Professorenschaft erhöhte sich stetig und nahm zwischen 2005 und 2015 von 14 % auf 23 % zu. Die Zahl der Professorinnen hat sich in diesem Zeitraum fast verdoppelt und erreichte 2015 mit rund 10 500 einen neuen Höchststand.

Die Gesamtzahl der Professoren und Professorinnen ist in den letzten zehn Jahren um 22 % gestiegen, wobei das wissenschaftliche und künstlerische Personal im selben Zeitraum einen Zuwachs von 61% zu verzeichnen hatte.

Assessing Women in Engineering (AWE) Project 2005. Career Development. AWE Research Overviews.

Career counseling and career theory provide insight into the reasons and ways people choose their careers with a focus on assisting people in finding satisfaction in their work lives. While most WIE directors are not formally educated in career development theory and practice, or even explicitly expected to provide career counseling, they will inevitably be in a position to provide support and guidance to women who have chosen (or have yet to choose) a unique and perhaps difficult career path. When choosing from theoretical perspectives, a counselor of women in non-traditional paths must choose wisely from the literature on career theory, which ranges from the traditional to the currently alternative. While traditional models have been criticized for their focus on middle-class males, newer, more diverse models have yet to be tested. Crozier (1999) and Cook, Heppner & O’Brien (2002) provide the following assumptions at the core of traditional theories that are problematic for women:

• Work is central to people’s lives.

• Work is the primary role for developing identity.

• Work is the primary means of meeting one’s needs.

• The paid work role can and should be isolated from other major life roles such as family roles.

• Career counseling should be separated from personal or lifestyle counseling.

• Career achievement is accomplished independently; achievement is completely in the control of the individual and is based solely on ability and initiative.

• The structure of opportunity characterizes occupational choices as made freely without barriers, limitations, or stereotypes.

• Career development is progressive, rational and linear.

Newer models seek to address the concern that women’s career development is often non-linear, both complemented and frustrated by multiple-role fulfillment, and shaped by the structure of opportunity. Such models often take into consideration the larger social context in which people function, opening a broader range of opportunities for intervention.

30 years ago, María José Martínez-Patiño (one of the authors), a young Spanish woman athlete, was disqualified by the Royal Spanish Athletics Federation from competing in hurdling after it was established that her chromosomal constitution was not female. She was eventually diagnosed with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, a disorder in which, despite the presence of a Y chromosome, the phenotypic development is female because of a lack of functional response to testicular androgens. Her refusal to stop competing as a woman made her an emblematic figure of the fight against arbitrary and discriminatory rules imposed by sports authorities against women, and the European Athletic Association declared her eligible to compete again 2 years after the disqualification.