So it might appear that each low in the business cycle corresponds to a permanent drop in the % of women in CS? Now we’re getting somewhere. I’m not sure why we’re picking on IBM. They weren’t my favorite company to work for, but when I was there in the 80’s there was preferential recruiting, raises and promotions for women programmers. More than 50% of the technical manager were women. Lots more women working there as programmers than I ever saw in school
However, it appears that IBM is now an outsourcing company.
This is two years old, but encouraging. There are twice as many women in the class at CMU now than when my son was there. (40% now.) http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2014/june/june5_womenincomputerscience.html
More info here: http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2016/february/women-in-computing.html
Right about that @ucbalumnus. The one guy I know who still works for IBM manages teams of off-shore technical workers.
Also, http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2016-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx notes that IBM is the third largest sponsor of H-1B visas, and its pay average for such employees is in the same range as low end IT outsourcing companies (Infosys, Tata, Wipro, etc.), rather than the range of companies that hire for their own work (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Intel, Qualcomm, Apple).
Why do we need so many H-1B visas? This appears to be taking jobs away from women in the CS field
I haven't read much of this thread, but I expect you'll see a similar trend at a large portion of the top private CS schools. For example, % female CS majors at Stanford are below. The percent female CS majors increased a bit during the CS boom of the 90s, then rapidly increased in the more recent CS boom. There was not a noteworthy decrease in % female CS majors, although the number of both male and female students in the major became much smaller after the dot.com crash in early 2000s. This is a completely different trend from the article.
1986 – 14% Women (First year with any CS majors at Stanford, extremely small sample)
1990 – 13% Women
1995 – 13% Women
2000 – 18% Women
2005 – 18% Women
2010 – 19% Women
2014 – 28% Women (Latest public records I found)
The vast majority of CS graduates will not end up working for IBM, Google, etc. The vast majority will end up in IT / IS departments of various companies in various industries. The job is very interesting anywhere and pay is OK. But sample of IBM, Google and such is unrepresentative since these very well known companies employ a minute number of all CS professionals out there.
I have worked at 9 places in very different industries, including local government, electric power supplier, manufacturing, retail, medical. Looking back, my female bosses definitely outnumbered male bosses. My current position is with one of largest in its field automotive and building products supplier, big international company with the majority of the market in Europe. My bosses are female and my big boss replaced the male one few years ago. She is way much more knowledgeable and respected in our department. I have been with this company for 10 years. Nice place to work! We have a lot of females, but the new hires have been all young males. As I mentioned before, many very smart girls around us who are high caliber students seem to be going to the medical field and good number of others are pursuing law schools. It may be regional and related to the fact that we live in very economically depressed city. I do not know a single college female who is in CS.
we have 5 interns this summer, but the surprising thing was that 4 are female and 1 is male. 4 cs majors and one is major. When i was in college I was often one of very few females in my technical classes.
and HImom, i would tell your friends daughter to keep her eyes out for other jobs, but not to worry about the ethnicity part. I don’t know that what she experienced was a culture thing… i think that’s just a bad attitude out of a not nice person. I work with many different ethnicities at work and they all treat me with the utmost respect. It all depends on the person. 
Back on page 2 of this topic, @user4321 asked folks to relay their anecdotes of being in school in the 80s and having women comprising 35% of their CS classes. He seemed suspicious of the reported numbers, as am I.
So far I haven’t seen anyone report anything close to 35%. To the contrary, most are posting about there being more women now than then, which directly contradicts the reports. What gives?
Oh I’m not surprised that Stanford and no doubt other schools have more CS majors. I haven’t got the the time to look them all up. But that’s a huge difference. I don’t think the culture in CS will change until there is a critical mass of women in the workplace. I think 40% is enough that your voice gets heard.
Of 5 people I can think of off the top of my head who major in CS during my time at Harvard (or Applied Math at the time) only one was a woman. I have no idea if the department was 20% women. I took the intro course and don’t recall feeling like a minority the way I did when I was the only woman in my German class.
Anecdotal information: My spouse attended an all-girls catholic school ('79 - '80 timeframe), and was going to take computer science and learn coding. The program had 20-30 students (girls, obviously). She thought that most were going into business programming and decided to get into bio/chem instead. One of the professors had been involved in the development of BASIC at Dartmouth. Her classmates found jobs programming, and some are still at it now. The school is now co-ed and I don’t know the percentage of women in CS.
However, in direct hire CS employment, it does appear that women are as well or better represented among H-1B visa workers than citizen/PR workers.
The problems with H-1B visas could be solved if a rule to exclude the outsourcing companies from them could be made. That would bring back the original purpose of using them to hire high end talent (often from US graduate programs). That use is being squeezed out by the low end IT outsourcing companies hogging all of the visas.
I have read through this thread some - it is very interesting indeed. @ucbalumnus – you wrote “The problems with H-1B visas could be solved if a rule to exclude the outsourcing companies from them could be made. That would bring back the original purpose of using them to hire high end talent (often from US graduate programs). That use is being squeezed out by the low end IT outsourcing companies hogging all of the visas.”
I have been reading about the problem: http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2016/03/displaced-american-stem-workers-spur-senate-hearing – highlights among other things the recent Disney issue (which really made me both sad & mad). The article ends this way
“The fight for changes in the laws that serve the interests of American people has begun in the Senate,” Sessions said. A number of senators have introduced bills S.2266, S.2394, and S.2365, which would protect American workers’ jobs against replacement by workers on visa, he added. Whether any will become law, however, remains to be seen."
In this election - US jobs are a big issue - seems ripe that these bills (I have not read them yet) intended to address the problems could / should get traction.
Taking less technical low end IT jobs (the kind that outsourcing companies like Infosys, Tata, IBM, Wipro, etc. have) out of eligible jobs for H-1B visas could also help. However, right now, it appears that they are included in “computer related occupations” (59.5% of the total in FY 2012) along with the more technical and less common CS jobs. The biggest subcategory is “Occupations in Systems Analysis and Programming” (51.0% of the total in FY 2012). Median pay for the latter in FY 2012 was $65,000 with 25th-75th percentiles were $60,000-$70,000, indicating that 75% or more are not the top end talent (typically with MS or PhD degrees in CS, or equivalent skill, doing highly technical jobs) that the H-1B visa program really should be for (the pay levels for H-1B visa workers at the direct hire companies were/are much higher).
I just dropped my son off for orientation geared towards CS/engineering majors. I helped him with his stuff and when we walked in I kept thinking things were off. Then, I realized there were no girls. I saw one poor girl checking in who looked flustered (I would be too). We found out that 90 guys had signed up and that 17 girls had signed up for this session. You are not required to attend this session if you are CS and my son told me I made a critical error as he could have gone the week before where there were girls. 
Laughing aside, I do think there seems to be a problem in the CS area with attracting good women.
Last year my daughter and I attended an open house at Georgia Tech. After a meeting with the director of admissions, you moved to other rooms depending on your desired major. We went to the presentation on CS. Out of roughly 50 kids in the room, my daughter was the only female.
Let me google that for you (in <10 seconds):
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~women/resources/aroundTheWeb/hostedPapers/Syllabus-Camp.pdf
My husband has worked in corporate it his whole life and has never taken one c.s. class. What he does seems to have almost nothing to do with Cs. And it seems like a computer scienctist would not find it interesting.
Let me reply (in < 5 seconds). Oh, I know what the study said. I’d just like to know where they were attending, because it sure as heck wasn’t the schools my buddies are I were enrolled at. :)) Trust me, we would have noticed!