While the number of women who have chosen the sciences for a career over the last two decades has increased, their participation in the engineering and computer sciences sectors has declined, according to a new study.

In 1996 women made up 45 percent of the workforce in the US, but just 12 percent of science and engineering jobs in business and industry, according to the study by the National Council for Research on Women (NCRW). Women's participation in college-level computer science study had declined to 20 percent in 1999 from 37 percent in 1984.

The challenge for teachers in Bermuda, if the figures given in the report in some way apply to the Island, is how to tailor education in the sciences to encourage female students to widen their career choices to include consideration of the myriad careers lumped under that classification.

The NCRW notes that the successful programmes aimed at increasing women and girls' participation in the sciences are also effective with boys, especially those from under-represented groups - that is blacks and Latinos. For example programmes at Carnegie Mellon University managed to increase the percentage of women in first-year computing science classes to 40 percent in 2000 from seven percent in 1995.

The NCRW recommends that encouragement must start at the community level, with more investment in science and technology literacy at all levels of education, the provision of resources for teachers to develop their science careers, and the encouragement of parents to promote their daughters' interest in science and technology.

"Young women are alarmingly absent from computer science advanced placement classes,'' the report states. `'According to an American Association of University Women report, girls do not feel computer-phobic - they demonstrate reticence about a technology that seems to them largely devoted to the interests of boys.

In such a situation, girls-only computer labs boost girls' enthusiasm. In addition, young women are drawn into computer technology when it is presented, not as a set-aside activity, but integrated into a subject area that interests them, whether it is history or language, ecology or economics.

Schools also need to identify and encourage visible role models for women and girls and institute mentoring programmes.

"Supportive mentors, role models and networks have been shown to be helpful beginning at early educational levels and continuing throughout a woman's scientific career,'' the NCRW stated. "Cross- or multi-disciplinary courses that demonstrate the connection of the sciences to other areas like the arts and to social, political, and health issues are important at undergraduate levels and beyond.

Other useful strategies provide multiple opportunities for entry into the sciences and introductory courses that nurture future scientists instead of the all-too-frequent gatekeeper courses meant to weed students out.''

Women seem to drop out at every point of transition to the job market, the report notes. Heads of departments play a "significant' role in either making change possible or in stifling it.

Currently less than ten percent of full professors in the sciences in US colleges and universities are women, even though women have been earning more than one-quarter of the doctorates in science for the past 30 years.

A study by Wellesley College found that the opportunity to conduct research was a significant factor in women's decision to remain with a science major.

Studies conducted by the University of Florida and Carnegie Mellon found that women tend to enter scientific fields with a focus on helping people, rather than pure or theoretical research.

But perhaps the greatest disincentive to women and girls considering the sciences is what happens to them in the job market. The salary gap between male and female computer and mathematical scientists persists and increases with age, the report found.

The 1995 median salary for women in their 20s with bachelor degrees in the sectors was $35,000 compared to $38,000 for men. Women with similar bachelor degrees in their 40s earned $48,000 compared to $57,000 for men. A seven-year study also found that women are twice as likely as men to leave science and engineering jobs for careers in other fields.

That salary discrepancy will remain a huge barrier to overcome in encouraging girls to consider focusing their education on the sciences, and especially computer related sectors. Businesses are, in a sense, missing out on a huge source of untapped talent because of the gender differences.

And while one does not expect girls to rush en-mass into choosing the sciences as a career, any educator will agree that the more they are encouraged to widen their outlook on what is available to them can only be of benefit to themselves, and by extension, Bermuda's goal of creating a "cyber-island''.

Tech Tattle deals with topics relating to technology. You can contact Ahmed at editoroffshoreon.com or (33) 467901474.