Women in I.T.

The first Women in IT conference at the University of Bedfordshire took place at the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CETL) on Thursday 13th May 2010. The event was aimed at encouraging more females into a discipline that is predominantly male dominated.

Participants in the event included students from local colleges (Luton Sixth Form), current undergraduate and postgraduate students from the Department of Computer Science and Technology, visiting lecturers and invited speakers from industry and academia.

Invited talks

The day involved talks by invited speakers and an interesting debate on Women in IT. There were three invited talks, the first by Reena Pau (University of Southampton) entitled "Computer Geek is Computer Chic" dispelled some of the myths that IT is only about programming.

The second talk was given by Dr Andrea Donafee (Managing Director, Cash Management Systems) and focused upon the wide range of career options available in IT, providing an encouraging message that women can take up some of the leading roles, and that women possess all the necessary skills to succeed in IT - in fact, they often beat men in skills such as communication, empathy and organisation! The talk was particularly relevant as Andrea studied a PhD (graduating in 2002) from the then, University of Luton (now University of Bedfordshire).

The third and final talk of the day was given by Dr Kelly Androutsopoulos (Kings College London), and was entitled, Computer Science - A Researcher's perspective, and gave an encouraging and exciting view of research careers (in IT) for women.

Women in IT - Debate

The conference also involved a debate that asked questions about why there are so few women in IT. The debate focused around the following 4 questions, and these provided some interesting and important messages:

What role(s) can women play in IT?
What can we do to encourage more women into IT?
What are the perceived barriers, and how can these be overcome?
What next for Women in IT?

The results of the debate (based on answers from the three groups) will be available shortly.

The event proved a great success, and it is hoped that it can be linked with other local and national initiatives, and grow to cover the wider areas of Science, Engineering and Technology (SET). For more information please contact Dr Paul Sant, paul.sant@beds.ac.uk

For further information about the event, you can visit the web page at: http://www.beds.ac.uk/witc