Opening Topics for Dialogue on Tech & Equity
1. Topics for Discussion
2. Donna's answers to topics
3. Moderator Donna Milgram, Instititute for Women in Trades,
Technology & Science (www.iwitts.com) Bio
1. Topics for Discussion
Let's focus on the solution, we know about the problem:
1. How can schools recruit women and girls to technology classes
and related careers?
2. How can women in technology education and careers that are
male-dominated receive support so that they are retained?
3. How can we interest young women in technology?
2) Donna's Answers to the Topics
1. How can schools recruit women and girls to technology classes
and related careers?
Proactive recruitment or marketing is required to interest females
students in classes or careers in which they see very few women. One
of the methods that has been successful has been to hold a women and
technology career orientation or career expo. Community College of
Rhode Island, an IWITTS WomenTech demonstration site
http://www.iwitts.com/html/womentech.html held a Career Expo least
February for women and 80 attended, to date 10 of these have
registered for Fall Technology courses and 16 more are activated for
the Fall semester (that had not been prior to the Expo).
The WomenTech sites are also developing womentech sections to their
community college Web sites. Stay tuned for the URLS upon launch.
2. How can women in technology education and careers that are
male-dominated receive support so that they are retained?
The internet gives us the ability to network women on-line. So you may
be the only African American Telecommunications Engineer in your real
time community but you can go to www.blackgeeks.net to meet others.
Here are a few of my favorites:
http://www.ladyautomechanics.com/
http://www.women-in-aviation.com/
http://www.webgrrls.com/explorer.htm
In Fall IWITTS will launch the womentechcommunity.org ? The all
women's technician club ? funded by the National Science Foundation.
3. How can we interest young women in technology?
Introduce them to female-friendly computer and video games. Computer
and video games are often the gateway to technology careers; they
orient children and adults alike to computer programs and problem
solving and those who play these games have a definite advantage over
those who don't. Most computer games and educational software focus on
male characters and interests. An October 2000 study by Children Now
found that only 54% of video games have female character and over half
the games had violent themes.
There are a growing number of female female-friendly computer and
video games. Make sure your school and public library have these among
their holdings and encourage your daughter to use them. A search on
www.amazon.com, for example, turns up the Mia Hamm Soccer video game -
Ms. Hamm is a Women's World Cup soccer champion. A free mystery game
for girls, currently being beta-tested is www.josietrue.com, and it's
funded by the National Science Foundation. Studies show that females
like solving puzzles and mysteries.
IWITTS will soon launch a Her Software and Her Career Products Review
Section on our Web site at www.iwitts.com (similar to product reviews
found on amazon.com) to enable us to assist each other in finding
female friendly software and games.
Introduce them to Web sites designed to interest girls in technology. There
are a growing number of Web sites designed to interest girls in technology.
Here are a few of my favorites:
Backyard
http://www.backyard.org/index.html
Cool Jobs for Girls
http://www.work4women.org/cooljobs/cooljobs.cfm
GirlTech
3) Who is moderator Donna Milgram, Executive Director of the Institute for
Women in Trades, Technology & Science (IWITTS www.iwitts.com )? Ms. Milgram
is Executive Director of IWITTS, a national nonprofit organization based in
Alameda, California. Ms. Milgram is Principal Investigator of the WomenTech
Project working with 3 community colleges around the country to increase
the number of women in their technology programs
http://www.iwitts.com/html/womentech.html funded by the National Science
Foundation. Ms. Milgram is also the producer of the School-To-Work:
Preparing Young Women for High Skill, High Wage Careers Video and Training
and has conducted hundreds of national and state workshops on Recruiting
Women to Tech. http://www.iwitts.com/html/upcoming_workshops.html
She has also authored many training tools in this area. Ms. Milgram is
supporting the Cisco Learning Institute/Cisco Gender Initiative
http://www.iwitts.com/html/cisco.html via research, consultation and
technical assistance.
Ms. Milgram serves on the Technology Committee of the Alameda Chamber of
Commerce.
Donna Milgram
Executive Director
Institute for Women in Trades, Technology & Science
www.iwitts.com * donnam@iwitts.com
1150 Ballena Blvd, Suite 102
Alameda, CA 94501
510-749-0200 ext. 101 (phone) 510-749-0500 (fax)
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