Mission Statement
ACM-W supports, celebrates, and advocates internationally for the full engagement of women in all aspects of the computing field, providing a wide range of programs and services to ACM members and working in the larger community to advance the contributions of technical women.
Our Corporate Supporters
We are very grateful for the support of several corporate sponsors. At present, ACM-W has funding from Oracle (through Oracle Academy), Microsoft Research, and Google for our scholarships, from Two Sigma for the Athena Lecturer Award, and continuing support from Microsoft Research for the Celebrations and for community college-related activities. Thanks to their generosity in helping us to support, celebrate and advocate for women in computing.
Welcome from the ACM-W Chair
After a three-year effort of eleven scientific organizations, the preliminary report A Global Approach to the Gender Gap in Mathematical, Computing and Natural Sciences is available. A major part of this project was a global survey of scientists. Analysis of survey responses produced several significant findings emphasizing that a gender gap continues to exist across all disciplines. These results include:
- Women were more likely to report receiving lower salaries compared to their colleagues, even after results were adjusted for explanatory factors such as age, discipline, geographic region, employment sectors, and level of human development in their region.
- Women were 1.6 times more likely than men to report interruptions in their graduate studies, a major factor impacting doctoral completion rates.
- Women were less likely to report positive relationships with their doctoral advisors and a lower doctoral program quality.
- Across all global regions, all disciplines, and all level of economic development, women were significantly more likely than men to report discrimination based on gender.
- Over 25% of women respondents across all the sciences reported personally having experienced sexual harassment at school or work. Women were also statistically more likely than men to say they had personally witnessed sexual harassment.
The news was not all bad, however, as an analysis of publication patterns in Mathematics, Physics, and Astronomy revealed that the proportion of scientific publications by women has increased steadily since 1995 and now sits at 85%-95% of all publications. Future related work hopes to include other disciplines in this analysis.
It is clear that the work that we do in ACM-W is still necessary and valuable in supporting women in computing globally. Celebrations and grad cohort events are shown to provide much needed inspiration for those who attend, while establishing student and professional chapters ensures a level of consistent, ongoing support for chapter members. I encourage those in regions where ACM-W activity is absent to reach out to me and I will connect you to those project leaders that can help you begin one of these activities.
For anyone planning to attend SIGCSE 2020, March 12th-14th in Portland, OR, you can find ACM-W at booth 619 in the exhibit hall. Stop by and one of our volunteers will be happy to talk with you about how you can be more involved in supporting, celebrating and advocating for women in computing through ACM-W.
Thanks for standing with us as we work to fulfill our mission.
Jodi Tims
ACM-W Chair
Other ACM-W News
- The Scholarships Committee announces the first awardees of 2020.
- Reflections on womENcourage 2019 are a part of the ACM-W Europe report.
- ACM-W North America welcomes its newest student chapter- California State University at Chico.
What’s NEW
First Conference Scholarships of 2020 Awarded!
We are happy to announce the first awards of 2020! We have four students going to the conferences they requested funds for. Undergraduate students Mansi Agrawal and Maitree Leekha are going to the flagship Artificial Intelligence conference, the 2020 AAAI Conference, this year in New York. Laxmi Pandey, a doctoral student at the University of California, Merced, is going to the ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval in Vancouver, Canada. Aurora Macias Ojeda, a doctoral student from Escuela Superior de Ingeniería Informática, Alicete, Spain is going to the International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA), in Salvador, Brazil.
Why You Should Join ACM-W
If you think it is important to recruit and retain as many women as possible in the computing field, you should join ACM-W! Together, we will help celebrate, inform and support women in computing:
- Celebrate: One of the most popular ways to celebrate women in computing is by starting and/or attending an ACM-W Celebration of Women in Computing; the accomplishments of women in computing are at the heart of ACM-W’s e-Newsletter. And ACM-W encourages its members to celebrate the work of prominent women by nominating them for Awards — such as the Athena Award & Lecture — as well as ACM Advanced Grade Membership.
- Inform: Via ACM-W’s student scholarship program, young women are informed about the research going on, and become acquainted with the researchers, in their field. Members of ACM-W Student Chapters are informed about the educational and career opportunities available to them.
- Support: Lend your enthusiasm, inspiration, and support to ACM-W, and help make a difference in the global computing community!
When you join ACM, or renew your membership, check the box for ACM-W. You will be added to our email list and receive our ACM-W Connection newsletter.