{Programming away the gender gap};ExaminingSequoiastudentexperiencesinmale-dominatedprogrammingclasses

Known for housing some of the biggest technology companies in the world, Silicon Valley lies in the very backyard of Sequoia High School. Given this, it may be alarming to find out that for the past several years, Sequoia has only offered two introductorylevel programming courses: Java Programming and Intro to Programming Mobile Applications. As someone who plans on pursuing a degree related to computer science in college, I hadn’t been aware of the programming classes until my sophomore year. The lack of a prevalent ‘tech culture’ (a focus on computer science, especially in the context of future careers) on campus could fuel the assumption that Sequoia doesn’t offer programming classes.

“Programming wasn’t really presented as an option for something that female-identifying people could do…I wasn’t really aware because it was never told that it could be a potential career choice. I knew it was there, but it just felt like it wasn’t meant for somebody like me…who identify or were born as female,” Idania Hernandez, a junior in Programming Mobile Applications, said.

There are biases that exist at the society level where I think in general, girls or women, people identify as female, are less inclined to pursue tech classes.

Even more alarming is the approximately fiveto-one male-tofemale ratio in both of the predominantly white classes, the most skewed gender distributions present in any Sequoia class. While it often goes unnoticed by the teacher and male students because of the minimal effects in a class mostly comprised of individual work time, female students are still aware of the effects.

“It’s definitely intimidating. If you’re in a room [and] you’re the odd one out and you have to ask a question and everyone looks at you… I think it definitely makes it a more intimidating environment…I truly don’t think [the guys notice]. Because I’ve never heard any of them mention it, but I know that the first day when I went into that class, because I was like, ‘Oh my god, another girl.’ I think if you’re the minority, you definitely notice more than if you’re in the majority,” Asha Smith, a senior in Java Programming, said.

I personally became keenly aware of the uneven gender distribution in programming when I sat for my AP Computer Science A exam last spring following an individual online AP course. Because of the asynchronous nature of the class and the limited interactions I had with the other students, up until that point, I had not noticed that the class was overwhelmingly male. Walking into the testing room, I was able to count more than 20 males, and including me, just four female high school students. In that moment, I felt like I did not belong and also became concretely aware of the pervasiveness of the gender imbalance in tech.

The male-dominated classes are reflective of a larger issue in the technology industry: the absence of females in the job sector. According to the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT), women only made up 26% of total employment in computing occupations in 2021. Compared to 1990 when the total percentage of women employed was 37%, the percentage of women employed has decreased by 11%. Even though the number of women in technology positions has slightly increased over the past few years, tech industries and computer science graduates are still maledominated.

In the context of Sequoia’s programming classes, there are many factors that could influence gender distribution, such as implicit biases that many hold regarding females in tech. Growing up, I was fortunate to have both of my parents working in technology-related industries. In particular, seeing my mom and the various connections she had with other women in tech is a leading factor towards why I feel empowered to pursue tech in my own future. However, for many others who did not grow up in that same environment, programming is far too often seen as too challenging or unfit for girls and women to learn.

“There are biases that exist at the societal level where I think in general, girls or women, people identify as female, are less inclined to pursue tech classes, which I’m not happy about…When you look at, on a societal level, I and we need to find a way to improve it,” said Gregory Stein, the Programming Mobile Apps teacher.

An additional explanation for the gender distribution may stem from as far back as middle or elementary school experiences with computer programming and the ideas of who is seen as a programmer.

“When I look at my classroom and it’s mostly freshman boys, that’s the majority, very few sophomores, juniors and seniors are in the class in general. It feels like that’s a lot of outside forces, be that in their middle school, they got interested in it and things were targeted towards boys there, or just in general when you think about who codes, we think of Steve Jobs, we think of Mark Zuckerberg and they’re all men,” Leveque said.

Though both programming classes don’t require any prerequisite experience, the four students interviewed for this article that were enrolled in the classes all cited that they had prior programming experience. Particularly, two of the women had been a part of girlsonly coding programs or initiatives, a growing national movement to attempt to balance the gender distribution in tech.

“I went to the Girls Middle School…in Palo Alto…one class that we had to take sixth to eighth grade was computer science. And in sixth grade, we learned programming like Scratch Jr., and then also programming websites. And then we started doing more Python and going more into HTML and CSS… So that was a really good introduction to the computer science world for me,” Sophia Webb, a sophomore in the Java Programming class, said. The early experiences with programming reveals how a lack of access as early as elementary school can unfairly put an aspiring student who didn’t have those courses at a huge disadvantage for high school and even college.

“We live in Silicon Valley, but I feel like in our specific community here in Redwood City, it’s not talked about in our middle schools, I went to Clifford and Orion Elementary School… and it just was not talked about, there’s little access to it,” Smith said.

Given that communities of color are less likely to have access to those resources and prior education, it leads to an underrepresentation of people of color that are introduced to tech in the first place. If the lack of opportunity is extended to only a few offerings of computer science in high school, that inequality persists.

“Especially since our school is 55% Latino, I feel like it’s a disservice to the community not to [offer higher level courses], it’s just so important, we need more diversity in the computer science field. And there’s obviously problems when we just have one or two racial groups, you’re missing perspectives. And I think it would bring a lot of value to have more Latino people in the computer science field,” Smith said.

Achieving gender and racial equity in STEM and technology isn’t an overnight fix; rather, it will take dozens of years to achieve and a collective societal effort to dismantle the biases far too many hold about women pursuing tech. Nevertheless, we all must keep in mind the fundamental goals and the numerous benefits to society equity holds.

“I think the push is really important because we know that STEM fields pay more and so if we think about women having opportunities in these interesting things, it’s really important that societal push happens just for the sake of equality, especially pay, and I think that Sequoia needs to embrace more of that,” Leveque said.