Results and Will

                                       Results and Will

Most of the social action generated by government and its adherents stems from the belief that decisions, indeed most behavior, is the result of hidden, unknown psychological pressures or intimidation, overt or subtle. This can be seen in action from disparity in results; everyone is assumed in a non-pressured environment, to arrive at the same point at the same time. If they do not, something is afoot.

There are only two academic fields where women were significantly underrepresented in 2018 and have been historically: Engineering (22.2%) and Computer Science (20.0%). It is interesting to note that the female share of Computer Science degrees increased every year between 1972 and 1984 when it reached a peak of 37.1% before falling almost every year since then to a low of 17.6% in 2008, less than half the share in 1984. Over the last decade, the female share of Computer Science has gradually increased by 1.4 percentage points from 17.6% in 2008 to 20.0% in 2018. But for whatever reason(s), women’s interest in pursuing degrees in Computer Science peaked 35 years ago and declined steadily ever since then except for a small uptick in recent years.

There has been similar though not quite as dramatic decrease in female interest in majoring in Mathematics/Statistics in recent years. After increasing steadily over time and almost reaching parity in 2001 when the female share of Math degrees reached 48.2%, the share has steadily decreased over the last 16 years and fell below 42% in 2017 for the first time since 1979 before increasing in 2018 to 42.4%.

This disparity has a number of explanations. Apparently, one is not free will.