Women into Computing

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.