Film maker Helen De Michiel created a documentary film called The Gender Chip Project, which follows five female students from Ohio State University (Columbus) over a period of three years. These particular students majored in sciences, engineering and math; and the film chronicles their college experiences in traditionally male domains.

To quote the film literature, “When gender collides with our cultural assumptions about who can flourish in these fields, how are young women changing the real and practical terms of engagement?”

It’s an interesting film. And what I find most noteworthy, even startling, are some of the statistics published in the documentary and accompanying toolkit.

The majority of undergraduates in the U.S. are women, yet only 20% are earning degrees in engineering and computer science.

In 1977, 36% of math or computer science B.A. degrees were awarded to women. In 2000, it was 32%. It’s gone down! And yet that’s where most of the job growth is, not to mention where most of the lucrative jobs are. My own work experiences mirror this trend. When I worked in the software engineering field in the mid-80’s, there were a lot of women in my organization; my recollection is somewhere around 40%. In 2000, I worked in a small software engineering organization (approximately 10 engineers), and only one was a woman.

Women are over 50% of our population. Yet in the work world, women make up 10-20% of high-tech workforce; 20% of engineering workforce; 27% of computer science workforce. A lot of us know what it’s like to be the only woman in a meeting.

And in terms of wages, in 1997 the median salary in science and engineering was $52,000 for men and $36,000 for women. Very disheartening; although we can only hope this wage gap has decreased in the intervening 9 years.

There’s a ton of other statistics in the literature that goes with the film, and none of these statistics are very good news for women. The point of the documentary is to engender action around addressing the issues that discourage girls and women from pursuing degrees and careers in science, technology, engineering and math. The documentation cites research that shows boys are more likely to attribute failure to external factors (e.g., “The teacher is a hard grader.”), and girls to attribute failure to internal factors (e.g., “I’m not smart enough.”).

Boy, doesn’t that sound all too familiar.