What should you read on International Day of Women and Girls in Science?

Today, February 11, is the UN's International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Despite marking this occasion every year, a cold hard look at the stats shows that gender diversity in science is still very much a work in progress.

In the computing field, these stats still make for depressing reading. Globally, women make up only 3% of ICT student enrolments. In the US, women make up only 18% of computer science students. 20% of computer programmers in the workforce are women. Only 15% of tenure track faculty are women. In AI, 80% of professors are men. At Data61, 23% of our staff are female. But only 13% of research managers are women. Mea culpa.

I've tried hard to address these problems ever since I stepped into leadership roles. Along the way, we've had some wins. But the situation overall remains rather depressing.

The purpose of this article isn't to offer any immediate solutions. There are success stories out there, such as CMU and Harvey Mudd College. These would be a good place to start for anyone looking for answers.

For now, I thought I would just offer a few interesting reads on International Day of Women and Girls in Science. What are your favourite relevant texts?

• Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez. Presents lots of examples of how the world is designed on data based on a male norm - a top shelf set at male height, crash test dummies not based on women's measurements, data showing women are scared walking in multistorey car parks but no design changes are made...
• The Smart Wife: Why Siri, Alexa, and Other Smart Home Devices Need a Feminist Reboot by Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy. I've talked about this one before, co-written by a former colleague. An easy read showing how digital technology has been designed with an outdated view of women as 1950s housewives - "friendly and sometimes flirty, docile and efficient".
• Women in Science (A Little People, Big Dreams Boxed Set) by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara. A boxed set for kids inspiring the next generation through the lives of Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie, and Amelia Earhart. Good for big kids too.

And if listening is more your thing, I always recommend the following podcast at this time of year - NPR's take on why women don't pursue computer science and that it all dates back to the way the first personal computers were marketed as "toys for boys". This led to a sharp drop in female computer science enrolments. And we've never recovered.

NPR's Planet Money, Episode 576: When Women Stopped Coding