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Organization

My report examines the following topics, each occupying a chapter:

Societal pressure against women's being successful, particularly in engineering.
Ways in which the male-dominated environments discourage women.
Inequalities in language, their causes and effects.
Negative consequences of some attempts to help women.
Conclusions and recommendations.

At the end of the report are appendices which contain additional information, such as the methods I used for data collection and implications of recent research on sex-based intellectual differences. Finally, there is an annotated bibliography.

The report does not directly address the problems of racial minority group members, such as blacks and hispanics, who are also underrepresented in computer science. Readers should not interpret my lack of material on this subject as implying that no bias exists against these groups. On the contrary, I have been told by a black female computer scientist that the color barrier is greater than the sex barrier. In many parts of this report, such as Section on subconscious bias, the experience of people of color is analogous to that of women.

Readers are welcome to contact the author with questions or comments. To do so, send electronic mail to ellens@ai.mit.edu or use the following address:

Room 630
545 Technology Square
Cambridge, MA 02139

ellens@ai.mit.edu