Women into Computing

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. Invited Speakers

   1. Women into Computing: The need for Positive Action Now

      • Joanna Foster

      Pages 1-7

   2. Beyond the Great Divide

      • Steve Shirley

      Pages 8-13

   3. Computing in Schools: the Same Old Story

      • Robin Ward

      Pages 14-19

   4. Getting Women into Computing

      • John MacGregor

      Pages 20-21

   5. Attracting Women Returners in Computing

      • Baroness Platt of Writtle

      Pages 22-28

   6. Employer — Education Cooperation

      • Jean Irvines

      Pages 29-32

3. Attitudes and Issues

   1. Where Are the Girls Now?

      • Gillian Lovegrove, Wendy Hall

      Pages 33-44

   2. Young Women and the Culture of Software Engineering

      • Flis Henwood

      Pages 45-50

   3. Expert Systems — A Women’s Perspective

      • Margaret Bruce, Alison Adam

      Pages 51-55

   4. Removed From Power

      • Lyn Bryant

      Pages 56-58

   5. Why Do We Want To See More Women in Computing?

      • Susan Jones

      Pages 59-65

   6. Machismo and the Hacker Mentality

      • Laurie S. Keller

      Pages 66-71

   7. Child Care Provision in Higher Education :- A Case Study

      • Gill Russell

      Pages 72-79

4. Young Women and Education

   1. Opting Out Of Technology: A Study of Girls’ GCSE Choices

      • Philippa Buckley, Barbara Smith

      Pages 80-86

   2. Action Research: Primary Schoolgirls and New Technology

      • Audrey Milner

      Pages 87-95

   3. IT Teaching in Schools — Gender Bias in the Secondary school

      • Elaine Coleman

      Pages 96-99

   4. Girls and Computing — A Case Study

      • Linda Anderson

      Pages 100-108

   5. Observations of Attitudes to IT in Database Use in Schools

      • Janet Spavold

      Pages 109-118

   6. A Study of Computing Experiences of Female A-Level Maths Students

      • Judy Donnelly

      Pages 120-123

This book contains the majority of the papers presented at the 1990 Women into Computing Conference, together with selected papers from the 1989 and 1988 Conferences. In 1988, the main theme running through the Conference was that of dismay at the low number of women taking computing courses or following computing careers. The 1989 Conference was concerned solely with workshops for schoolgirls and the 1990 Conference concentrated on strategies rather than an assessment of the situation. As editors, we set as our task to make a selection of papers presenting the overall picture in 1990. We found that many of the issues discussed in 1988 are still a cause for concern in 1990, but that strategies to improve the situation are many and varied. Section I contains speeches from the invited speakers and needs little introduction. Section II contains papers covering so me attitudes and issues of concern, ranging from the specific (Gill Russell on child care and Laurie Keller on hacker mentality) through to broader aspects of gender inequality (the papers of Flis Henwood, Margaret Bruce and Alison Adam, and Lyn Bryant). Susan Jones takes a look at the reasons why we should want to see more women in computing, whilst Gillian Lovegrove and Wendy Hall present a more general paper on school and higher education.

• Gender
• Information Technology (IT)
• computing
• cooperation
• demography
• education
• management
• software engineering
• women

• Department of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

  Gillian Lovegrove

• Department of Computer Science, University College London, London, UK

  Barbara Segal

Policies and ethics