The United States education system has improved in the last two decades but is lacking when compared globally. Computer science in the United States is a class that you can barely find. Most High schools teach students how to use Microsoft office and count that as Computer Science when it is not even close to the real thing. Other countries such as Malaysia and Norway have adopted different techniques to help encourage women to study more computer science degrees. Also stereotypes of computer science do not even exist in some countries like they do in the United States. So it can be confusing as to why there are less women students pursuing computer related majors when there are more women than men attending college. There are some reasons to believe why there are not enough women in computer related majors such as psychological and social such as stereotypes. However, the United States should implement some policies towards advancing computer science education by looking at what other countries have done. 

Countries such as Norway have developed programs that help them get more women into their universities and studying computer science. Norway had an advertising program that tried to focus on four topics to get women to join their computer science department. That was getting a critical mass of women, education reform, changing stereotypes, and changing discipline. To start off, one of the big types of education reform they focused on was getting more women role models to help encourage women students to join. To do this, they had a lab with only females in it and also they made sure that most of the teaching assistants were women. This change in atmosphere was believed to help female students feel encouraged when they were surrounded by people of the same sex. However, in the working environment women and men will be working together. "Professor A had received signals from people in the Norwegian ICT industry that were not really satisfied with the graduates they received from NTNU" (Lagesen,79). This quote means and later on explained how the people receiving the graduates from this university wanted graduates who could communicate and grasp customers' needs and understand what they wanted. That is something a lot of professors and employers are starting to notice today. It is that women try to focus on the social aspect of computers and how it is more user friendly rather men would focus on the computer itself and how it works. In an npr broadcast Kenny Joseph, a doctoral computer scientists student, said "With a more diverse group of people building it, you get better technology. If only men are building technology, then you get technology that pretty much just works for men but not for everyone "(CMU work to encourage women). This can be seen as changing the discipline. A member from the experiment in Norway said "Women were invited to take part in the computer science profession, not because they were really interested in computer science, but rather because of the essential "feminine" qualities they were presumed to have." (Lagesen). This demonstrates that stereotypical qualities that females have are desired for the Computer Science profession. Part of their advertising campaign said that they wanted women qualities. Karen a student at the University said that the only reason she joined the Computer science department was because of the advertisements. "Then she saw the circles and square brochure were it said: female qualities, we want women, big words like that".(Lagesen,83). Some women who also read the advertisements joined the program because they were interested in math and sciences. Kristel, another student, said that she wanted to get a masters in engineering and always put math and physics as a priority. When she saw the advertisements and the quota she thought it would be a good option to study computer science since it is related to math and sciences. All of these women show the success of the advertising campaign. Since they all have in interest in math and science with a good job outlook, the campaign showed to be a success for people who fall under that category instead of people who do not. Another way to change the discipline was to incorporate an environment that is completely female. STEM schools have partnered up with an organization called The Young Women's Leadership School of Astoria and this program mostly represents schools in low in-come area for girls to be prepared and ready for college(To grow new generation of girl scientists). Most of the students participating in the program are or will be first generation college students. The point of the program is that it is empowering women. Brittaney, a student from one of these schools, was more interested in history and English, but after taking a coding class at Harvard over the summer she believed she was ready to take on leadership roles and not be intimidated by the males in her class. When she was asked by one of her classmates why she was so comfortable she responded that she attended an all-girls school. To help alieve the confusion on the students face she told her that her teachers provided a lot of support and that each of their classes had a lot of technology incorporated into them(To grow new generation of girl scientists). She later went on to explain that if she had not attend her school that she would have not realized or been exposed to any of the STEM related majors and how much she loves it. Creating single sex schools can provide a supportive and eye opening path for women to explore and they will not feel intimidated by the stereotypes already set by society because they will have the support of their peers and teachers to help them. Something also to notice is that even though men might seem good at computer programming there is a likelihood that they are inflating what they know, or are overly confident while women have been shown to underestimate their abilities(Margolis,111). Ironically in Malaysia women make up most of the computer science jobs and in colleges, especially the University of Malaysia, women are in most of the classes. Similarly, the Universities quota for women made it more appealing for them to join as it did with the University in Norway. When students of the study were interviewed, they found it surprising that computer science in western culture was associated with being a masculine job (Mellstrom, 896). Instead they represented a gender divide with outdoor jobs such as a civil engineer and indoor jobs like computer scientists. What makes it the most interesting is that different cultures have different looks on jobs and occupations. For instance, students who are studying abroad from Brazil are taking advantage of their science without boarders program which will end this year. Most of the students in this program are women because their culture does not associate computer science with being a job only for men. Also, they teach it in their schools at a much earlier age than they do in America. 

Computer science should be taught in America the way math is taught in the public school system.  In a discussion on npr with Maria Klawe, a mathematician, computer scientist, and president of Harvey Mudd college, she said that "you can't really go into any profession without taking math every single year"(Henn). To make this even more general, instead of a profession we can relate this to college. Only 15-20 percent of computer science undergraduate majors at leading U.S departments and only 17 percent of those who are taking the high school advanced placement test are female (Margolis, 105).When Students arrive to college who are majoring in computer science there are people who have a lot of experience in coding, people who have little experience in coding, and then there's people with no experience in coding. Many of the people with little experience are women when they enter college (Margolis, 110).  However everyone has experience with math. That is why schools in America should begin to teach computer science in schools like they do with mathematics. At some Universities, to ease the process of studying computer science, some offer an introductory course for students who have little to no experience with coding, and a more advanced course for students who have experience coding. A reason for this is that less than ten percent of schools in America teach computer science and private sectors are finding it difficult to hire enough engineers and scientists because there are not enough people learning it. In a broadcast with Sal Khan, CEO of khan academy, he said "A lot of educators haven't been exposed to it when they were you. So that's a challenge, but there's also an opportunity in it that there isn't anything to replace. It's a green field. It's a new area and there's all sorts of incredible tools for people to learn."(). Since there are not a lot of good educators teaching it, it can be difficult for people to learn the subject and in most American schools since they do not already teach it, students who go into higher education might experience difficulty learning it. However some good news from this broadcast is that seven of the nation's largest schools districts such as New York, San Francisco, and Chicago have pledged to increase student's access to computer science classes. A difficult thing that women find is that they conclude to soon that they have to look the part in order to succeed and they then begin to question their ability and interest if it is enough(Margolis, 113). This ideology of only males can dominate computer programming affects teachers as well. A male teacher had a discussion about his computer science class and explained that there were more boys than girls. He also said that many of the boys said it was fun but he did not hear that from any of the girls(Margolis, 113-114). Many boys seem to be more interested in computers than girls, however maybe it is because they do not fully understand the beauty behind what computer science actually is. In a TED talk by Linda Liukas she informs us that most of the things we do in real if are related to computing. For example, knitting was a series of sequences that we follow in order to perform a task. She also talks about how we should give kids the right tools to help kids understand the beauty behind computers to help them express themselves and to show that it is not so complicated and scary to do so (Liukas). This video teaches us the fundamentals that a computer is not a complicated machine but that people just do not understand and appreciate the beauty that computers have to offer. That's why it is important to change people's ideas behind computer science that it is not just for males because females can offer exciting and new ideas that could be even better than the ones they come up with in Silicon Valley. 

Even though computer science in the United States is a class that you can barely find, we can see that there are effective ways of implementing it as shown by other countries. Instead of teaching it to students about how to use Microsoft office, we can teach it like math and have students be prepared when they enter college. To take it a step further we can look at other countries such as Malaysia and Norway and adopt different techniques similar to theirs to help encourage women to study more computer science degrees. Stereotypes can be forgotten too if there are more female scientist out there so women can be encouraged to study STEM related majors. This way we can graduate more women so big tech companies can hire efficient and amazing women programmers. Overall, women in America have been underrepresented in science related fields and the only way to change that is by creating more successful women scientists. Also, we need to inspire the younger generations that computer science is something amazing and that they can do it since we already say they can do anything. Computer Science should therefore be looked at as a field that will continue to grow because our world is dominated by technology and the only way for it to advance is to have people that continue to ask questions as to how and why things work the way they do, but we should also remember that men should not only be asking the questions. 

