Attracting More Women to Computer Science Requires Shattering the 'Brogrammer' Culture - Education - GOOD

Attracting More Women to Computer Science Requires Shattering the 'Brogrammer' Culture - Education - GOOD:

Call it "revenge of the nerds": Computer programmers are beginning to shed the stereotype of antisocial guys with bad acne and extensive action figure collections. Unfortunately, they’re ditching the image of awkward geeks in favor of being seen as collar-popping, beer-swilling bros.

They call them "brogrammers"—tech startups and university computer science departments are chock full of them. But whether they're nerds or bros, one thing that hasn't changed is that the programmers are overwhelmingly men. And the brogrammer culture is making computer science a pretty unwelcome environment for women college students.

Although women now make up the majority of college graduates, the number of female computer science grads has dropped precipitously over the past 25 years—from nearly 40 percent in the mid-1980s to 18 percent in 2009. As a result, only 2 in 10 programmers are women.