[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 17252]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            THE HOUR OF CODE

  (Mr. HONDA asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. HONDA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss the issue of gender 
imbalance in the computing industry.
  Today, women make up over half of the American workforce but only a 
quarter of the professional computing occupations. We see a similar 
imbalance in the classrooms. Girls in high school take over half of all 
the advanced placement exams but only a fifth of computer science 
exams.
  This imbalance deprives the computing industry of a great resource of 
human capital, and it limits its creativity. To address this imbalance, 
we need to encourage our female students to pursue computer science as 
early as possible.
  In that spirit, I would like to recognize Computer Science Education 
Week and the Hour of Code. These programs have reached tens of millions 
of students worldwide. We need programs like these to ensure that the 
next generation of computer professionals is diverse so we have all the 
best talent.

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