Inspirational

The other day, I went on the prowl for another women in ICT article. The best I found was another article speaking about the lack of women in IT, this time in middle to top level management.

However, a link in the article to a study done by the Anita Borg Institute got me thinking.
Who comes to mind when you think of Inspirational women in Computer Science?

For me, I think of two - Anita Borg and Grace Hopper. But I must admit, off the cuff I didn't know too much about them - so I started to do a bit of research!

Let me start with the aforementioned Anita Borg. Being a recent (female) university graduate in Australia, I know Anita Borg thanks to Google's Australian Women in ICT scholarship in memory of her. I started to dig around a little, and Anita Borg co-founded the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference, and began Systers.

She sounds quite amazing, doesn't she!

So how about Grace Hopper?
What a question! A quick search on Grace Hopper yields results that describe her as a "Pioneer Computer Scientist" , and I find she has achieved ultimate fame in her very own Wiki article. You can read about her amazing life from a variety of sources - I'm not going to bother to list them all here. She was a Rear Admiral with the US Navy and in her long life was instrumental in developing COBOL and won the first ever Computer Science Man-of-the-Year Award from the Data Processing Management Association. Brilliant.

Who comes to mind for you?

ACS-W Survey Findings

Last week, The Australian ran a story about low female participation in the ICT industry. You can find it here.

The story highlights a few comments from the latest survey conducted by the ACS regarding women in ICT that I found interesting. The article mentioned remuneration inequality, going on to say that the women who experienced inequality were not new to the field but rather had been working in industry for a while.

This reminded me of a conversation I had recently. A friend of mine mentioned to me that she feels graduates do not notice the inequality, because opportunities for promotion and renumeration increases haven't yet passed their desk. She felt that the more experience I have in IT, the more I will notice opportunities passing me by for a similarly qualified male colleague.

If this is indeed the case, the time to do something about it is now, for the young graduates who are not yet facing these issues. And yet, only 17% of respondents to this survey were graduates or women who have newly entered the workforce. Surely young women in IT make up a larger percentage than this? Is this because they weren't aware of the survey because they aren't members of the ACS? Is it because they didn't see the point? Or perhaps that the numbers of women entering IT is declining - which is a point the article makes?

Trawling ./ today, I came across this article, which linked to this article by The New York Times. It seems that according to various bodies in the US (you can read the article), the percentage of women in Computer Science is declining. Every so slightly, but it's declining.

Do you think this trend is worrying? The article mentions other career paths are more promising, like web design and games. Is this really a problem?

Let's start with some basics

So - it's been a while, hey?

Girl Geek Dinners Perth has been dormant for months - but it's time to change that. This space will be used to highlight events in Perth that may be of interest to our members, including our own.

ACSW Networking Night
Australian Computer Society’s Board for Women has it's final networking night for 2008 coming up; in fact it's on Wednesday 12 November, at eCucina Restaurant in Perth. The event is free for ACSW members and there's a small fee for affiliates and the general public.
There's a wealth of knowledge in ACSW - I hope to see you there! You can find out more from www.acs.org.au/wa under events.

Curtin University of Technology Software Engineering Honours Presentations
Software Engineering at Curtin Uni has a bit of a different honours project for its students; they put Software Engineering into practice in a small but very real software project for industry. The chance to see how the students fared as practising Engineers is coming up soon. More information can be obtained by contacting the Department of Computing at Curtin University of Technology.

End of University Year
This is not so much an event that we can attend, but be aware of. As the university year ends, it's time for another round of graduates to seek out their next challenge, and for industry to snap up the talent! Good luck to all students currently facing exams; and good luck to employers looking for the next crop of inspiring graduates!

Welcome Girly Geeks

Hi and Welcome

This first post has been a while coming as it has taken some time to get things off the ground and running.  However in the lead up to the first dinner we realised that we wanted to be able to write about our dinners and also have a place to include photos.  Hence this blog was created.  We also encourage everyone with facebook to join our facebook group, as it is a great way to be notified of our events.  http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=65585765012 ).  

Another post will be put up shortly on the latest dinner, with some happy snaps from the night.  

Cheers,

Tracy