Using & Teaching Educational Technology
A gender item
By Terry Freedman
Wed, 8 Mar 2006, 09:26

This week two magazines came through my letterbox, each dealing with the gender issue in ICT. It seems that the battle is by no means over.

An article in the February 2006 edition of Information Age (not online yet, but here is the URL: http://www.infoconomy.com/pages/information-age/index.adp) declares that "The IT profession is losing its fight to attract -- and retain -- women." A startling statistic is used to support this statement:

"The annual labour survey by the UK's Office of National Statistics shows that while in 1997 27% of the IT workforce was female, by 2004 it had crashed to 21%"

That use of the word "crashed" is pretty accurate: the drop is not 6%, a mistake many people make, but 22%. And that is in less than a decade!

So, why is this the case? According to the article, a number of factors are at work:

• The so-called role models that we see are often male and geeks: there is a common view that girls and women are not interested in the techie side of things. I have to say, from my own experience that is not the case, having known a lot of technically-inclined women. I know there is a danger of thinking that what must be true for oneself must also be true for the world at large, but I do sometimes wonder how far statements about women and technology are based in reality and how far they have their roots in preconceived ideas and stereotyping.
  
• Many women have experienced a glass ceiling at work at different stages of their career, and the absence of women role models means that they have few people to turn to or to inspire them with confidence.
  
• Girls have a confused picture of what jobs in IT are like, with many thinking that they are administrative.

The article goes on to talk about the idea that women bring "soft" skills to the workplace, ie a willingness and ability to ask questions in order to find out exactly what the problem is, according to Maggie Berry of the Women in Technology group.

Hold that thought for a few minutes while we turn to the other article I mentioned. That is an article in the current issue of InteracTive called "Bridging the ICT gender gap".

This points out that, according to a study carried out by Toshiba, only 4% of girls complained that computers are "boring", yet most of them were not sure that they wanted a career in the IT industry.

The article goes on to suggest what schools and the IT industry can do about it, such as encouraging girls to go into jobs in the IT industry, which means that there needs to be appropriate careers guidance at the school level, of course. According to the Toshiba study, more than half of schoolgirls are not aware of whether their school offers such advice, which seems to me symptomatic of the problem. Indeed, the advice that girls be encouraged to work in IT seems to me as much use as a solution as the answer given on a recent BBC programme about Time by a 112 year old woman asked what her secret for long life was. "Just don't die!", she said.

One solution adopted by many schools is the establishment of a computer club for girls. You join the CC4G organisation and then get all the advice and activities you need. The trouble is, I have a few problems with this approach, but firstly I should perhaps say that Naace, the subject organisation to which I belong and of which I am vice chair, is a sponsor of CC4G, and so the usual disclaimer applies: my views do not necessarily reflect those of Naace, and vice versa! In other words, I am writing here in a purely personal capacity. OK, now for my reservations:

• I thought this kind of discrimination was illegal, because of the Sex Discrimination Act. No doubt there is some sort of a loophole. I personally don't think much of the idea of so-called positive discrimination, which I think is patronising to the client group, and infuriating for everyone else. I speak as someone who, in 1983, asked a (female) computer teacher at a school I'd just started teaching at if I could join her lunchtime computer class. She refused, on the grounds that it was for women only.

My next two reservations relate to the sorts of comments made by teachers in schools:

• "Girls find IT boring". If that's true, as opposed to being a stereotypical perception, then:

a) isn't that the fault of the curriculum, or the teaching staff, or both?

b) in that case, why would they find a computer club interesting?

• "... the club allows [girls] to work past the hesitance of "I can't do that" and a boy leaning across and saying "What you do is this."" If pupils are allowed to do that, surely that's a matter of the classroom (and the school) ethos? When I was teaching, I made it part of my classroom code of conduct that people were allowed to help one another (indeed, encouraged to do so), but not to actually do it for them. Indeed, I would never allow pupils, usually boys, to shout out answers across the room or to hog class discussions. As far as I'm concerned, it's a classroom behaviour management issue rather than a gender one per se.
  
• Isn't there something wrong with a school that is unable to properly educate its female pupils in timetabled curriculum time, and has to do so instead in an after-school club?
  
• Finally, having been to a presentation about the work of the CC4G, given by one of its officers, I have grave doubts about its educational value. Hopefully, the presenter did not give us a typical example of the sorts of activities encouraged, but the one shown to us required girls to select different coloured nail varnish and drag and drop them onto a hand. The idea was that this would teach girls about databases without actually mentioning the term, on the grounds that "databases" sounds boring. OK:

a) if this isn't patronising, I really don't know what is

b) in terms of computer skills, all the girls had to do was drag and drop, a skill level which the UK's National Curriculum expects of 3 year olds

c) in terms of higher order thinking skills -- well, there weren't any

d) in terms of realism, I may be mistaken here, but I was not aware that women, when getting dressed in the morning, consult a database to help them decide which colour nail varnish to wear.

OK, so what can schools do about the gender issue? Here are my suggestions:

• If it is true that women are good at "soft" skills, then there has never been a better time to introduce blogging, wikis and other "cool tools" into the classroom (especially as they are finding their way into corporate culture, along with industrial-strength instant messaging).
  
• Classrooms should have an ethos that encourages collaboration and co-operation, and discourages the hogging of discussions, shouting out answers and so on.
  
• Classroom activities should be grounded in problem-solving, especially the sort of problems that can't be solved without talking about it or seeking people's views. Schools should be doing that anyway, because it's commonly acknowledged that after a certain point of skills development, achievement at the higher levels requires discussion with others.
  
• If you are the head of the ICT team, make sure that women have an equal chance of being recruited and being promoted as men.
  
• This shouldn't need saying, but unfortunately it does in some cases: if you are male then make sure you treat girls and women with respect. That would not only subsume the previous point, but also mean asking them to do the same range of tasks you'd ask men and boys to do. Apologies if that sounds patronising, it isn't meant to be.
  
• Ensure that there is plenty of literature about work in the IT industry, especially aimed at girls, and make sure that you or someone else can provide appropriate careers guidance.

Hopefully, once a critical mass of girls enters careers in the IT industry, the negative aspects of the so-called "real" world can start to be addressed from within.

This article will appear in a forthcoming issue of Computers in Classrooms.

© Terry Freedman Wed, 8 Mar 2006