What is the typical career path for female Computer Science and Engineering graduate?

How difficult is it to survive in male dominated field? Do female CS still get paid less?

The unfortunate thing about our society is that women can, and on average do, get paid less than their average male counterparts for almost every job description there is.

I also wonder how much less. Do you know?

Commonly quoted statistic is 78 cents on the dollar for white women. Black women get 50- or 60-something, if I remember correctly; Hispanic women somewhere around that at well; disabled women much much less.

Do you think it will change in the next 5-10 years when our kids get into the workforce?

That commonly-quoted statistic isn’t accurate though. The actual pay gap between equal work/qualifications is actually quite small, so if we really want to address the issue of women earning, on average, less than men, it is more pertinent to talk about how to attract more women into higher-paying jobs. Sexism may well (or rather, likely does) play a role in some of the wage gap, but it is a small slice of the pie when you control for a number of factors that the 77/78 cents statistic does not.

Below are some of the more reputable links on the matter that I’ve come across.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/05/the-biggest-myth-about-the-gender-wage-gap/276367/
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/01/no-women-don-t-make-less-money-than-men.html
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-wage-gap-myth-that-wont-die-1443654408
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-gap_b_2073804.html

One of my kids worked on a small team of 8 at his last job, all computer scientists and engineers. One of the women was a Harvey Mudd CS grad , another was a male Swarthmore CS grad. I would hope the guy wasn’t making more , as they were both hired right out of undergrad. Another team member had a PhD in CS and had leadership responsibility , so of course should have been paid more. Women engineers and computer scientists should have good opportunities, in general, and should be able to follow different kinds of career paths, based on their interests. More men than men still gravitate to engineering and CS, though, and anything that makes those fields more attractive to women (equal pay, positive work environment, etc.) is a good thing.

I have been out of management for a while (now semi-retired) and it wasn’t CS but aerospace, but there was no gender bias in pay that I could see. I do have to qualify that remark in that there weren’t as many women engineers as men and more of the women that were there were on the younger side, so if you just averaged the salaries of the men and the women, the women were paid less. But if you took a male with X years experience and was doing a good job and compared him with a women of equal experience and ability, their pay was probably quite similar. This may not have always been the case years ago, but the engineering companies I worked with today all seem to recognize that gender is not a discriminator on job performance. And most companies use a “pay for performance” type system for determining pay.

I’ve had a few management roles overseeing probably more in MIS but there were CS in my and peer departments. Any pay differences I saw tended to be more in experience and years with the company. Furthermore, in the places I’ve been diversity measures were always part of the managers’ goals. You were still told to hire the best person for the job, but if you had 2 fairly equal candidates there was a preference for women and ethnic minorities.

For the OP, if you have good grades, experience with relevant tools (projects and/or internships), and can get along with people, you’ll do fine. Grades and experience may be key here because the pool of male candidates is larger (for now), there will typically be top level male candidates you are up against. But do well in school and you can get a good job and have a good career.