Where are all the Girls?

Wednesday 8th April 2015, 6:30 pm.

Speaker: Dr Hannah Dee, Aberystwyth University.

Venue: Room G.07, University of Edinburgh Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB.

This event is free of charge and open to all. No registration required - just turn up.

Refreshments and networking from 6:00 pm.

This meeting is supported by NCR.

Synopsis

There are many initiatives supporting women in computing, from programming systems aimed at primary school girls, through to initiatives helping women get back into the tech industry following career breaks. However, in terms of "intervention density" (if that's even a thing), it seems we aim a lot of our efforts and funds at younger women - students, apprentices, school kids. It's over a decade since the book "Unlocking The Clubhouse" gave us a detailed look at the student
experience in the USA: did we learn anything from that, or are we just repeating the same old stuff? Do today's young women have the same experiences? In this talk I will look into the attitudes and experiences of younger women in tech - the things we're trying to do, the things which work, the things which are too little, and the things which are probably too late. I will also try to address the big question: we've 15% women at undergrad level, so it's clearly not
working ... are we wasting our time?

About the speaker

Dr Hannah Dee is a senior lecturer in computer science at Aberystwyth University. She runs the UK's main event for women undergrads and MSc students (the BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium, now in its 8th year), and she's been on the committee of BCSWomen for nearly a decade. Her research is in computer vision and artificial intelligence, and before Aberystwyth she held researcher positions in Leeds, London and Grenoble (France). She's also interested in teaching computing to schoolkids, and has written workshops aimed at kids which use AI, robots, wearable tech, and android programming.