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Comment by ngoel36 | Hacker News Reader

Ok, so women still choose CS at a smaller proportion than men do...that's alright for now.

What's awesome is that women are now choosing CS more than any other major, and Stanford is providing them an environment where it's cool to do so. That's incredible.

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In all fairness, this is likely a structural data anomaly. ie, it is driven by the number of majors at the school, and their level of abstraction. Here are some historical data points.

Notice the arbitary abstraction of, eg

Bio Sciences Human Biology

1955 1. History 2. Economics 3. Psychology 4. Political Science 5. Bio Sciences

1965 1. History 2. Political Science 3. English 4. Psychology 5. Economics

1975 1. Psychology 2. Bio Sciences 3. Economics 4. History 5. English

1985 1. Economics 2. Human Biology 3. Bio Sciences 4. Electrical Engr 5. English

1995 1. Bio Sciences 2. Human Biology 3. Economics 4. Psychology 5. English

and now we look at 2010 (from quora)

Biological Sciences (1.32%) but Human Biology (12.58%) Biology (5.74%)

=~20% of Standford majors in 2010 are "biology majors" in plain language usage.

Based on data on Bachelor's Degrees conferred in the 2009-2010 school year[1], the top majors are:

    Human Biology (12.58%)
    Economics (8.10%)
    International Relations (6.20%)
    Biology (5.74%)
    Computer Science (4.94%)
    Engineering (4.71%)
    Psychology (4.54%)
    Political Science (4.25%)
    English (3.96%)
    History (3.62%)
    Management Science and Engineering (3.39%)
    Mechanical Engineering (3.10%)
    Science, Technology, and Society (2.30%)
    Communication (2.18%)
    Electrical Engineering (2.07%)
    Mathematics (2.01%)
    Earth Systems (1.84%)
    Physics (1.84%)
    Sociology (1.49%)
    Biological Sciences (1.32%)*

I suspect that differentiation would make more sense if they replaced "human biology" with "pre-med".
I graduated from UVA In '99 and the biggest majors by far were psychology, sociology, history and economics, possibly in that order, but definitely each having ~500 graduates (out of a class of perhaps 2800-3000). I think the entire engineering school only graduated about 300-400 people each year (at that time).
The current enrollment seems to match Stanford's stats, interestingly: http://www.seas.virginia.edu/about/facts/

Is that really awesome, or is is bad news for say engineering or physics which could be losing those same women and are traditionally even more male dominated than computer science is? If those subjects are losing as many women, then this is actually bad news for gender same-number-ness.

Good question.
There's been a significant change (at least from my perspective) in the awareness of inequitable treatment of women in tech in the last few years, and I'd like to think that's one of the contributing factors to this change.
If true, that means that the previous levels of entry into other subjects were (in part) due to students rejection of CS. If CS loses its repulsion factor then that brings everyone's metrics back to neutral and will make other problems clearer.
Much as I hate to wheel out the trite "everything is a market" trope, the more subjects like physics will have to work to improve the treatment of women in science (although my perception is that it's not as bad as tech)... and maybe (one day) the way science is run to make it a more appealing career.
I was a physics undergrad and chose to ditch science as a career at my first opportunity. A majority of the people who stayed on to do an MSc or PhD did so only because it would buy them a well payed role at a bank, or PWC, or Anderson (sorry, "Accenture"). It's a shitty career, fighting for funding or tenure, full of victorian-era bullshit.
The sooner physics (for one) cleans house the better.

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