This blog is linked to the Disappearing Women: North-West ICT project, based at The University of Salford. The idea of the blog is to generate discussion about why women leave the ICT sector (particularly in the North West of England), vowing never to return. This blog is open for comments from anyone who is interested in this issue. We would especially like to hear from women who have left the ICT industry and would like to tell us about their experiences.

Think about the things that are important to you. Perhaps you care about creativity, family relationships, your career, or having a sense of humour. Pick two or three of these values and write a few sentences about why they are important to you. You have fifteen minutes. It could change your life.

History has had no shortage of outstanding female mathematicians, from Hypatia of Alexandria to Ada Lovelace, and yet no woman has ever won the Fields medal – the Nobel prize of the maths world. The fact that men outnumber women in the highest echelons of mathematics (as in science, technology and engineering) has always been controversial, particularly for the persistent notion that this disparity is down to an innate biological advantage.

President of Harvard University Lawrence Summers spoke of the reasons behind the disproportionate lack of women in top-end science and engineering jobs. Avoiding suggestions of discrimination, he offered two explanations – unwillingness to commit to the 80-hour weeks needed for top level positions and, more controversially, a lower "intrinsic aptitude" for the fields. According to Summers, research showed that genetic differences between the sexes led to a "different availability of aptitude at the high end".

Press release about the conference "Beyond the leaky pipeline. Challenges for research on gender and science", that took place in Brussels on 19th-20th October 2010.

The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) announced a turnout of 1,071 attendees for the first Career Fair at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. The Grace Hopper Celebration Career Fair was underwritten by the National Security Agency and Raytheon. The world's largest gathering of women in computing in industry, academia, and government, the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) was a five-day technical conference designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. The conference, themed "Collaborating Across Boundaries," was held in Atlanta, Georgia from September 28 - October 2, 2010.

An article by Lenore Blum and Carol Frieze; Gender differences in computer science tend to dissolve – that is, the spectrum of interests, motivation, and personality types of men and of women becomes more alike than different – as the computing environment becomes more balanced. This finding is emerging from our ongoing studies of the evolving culture of computing at Carnegie Mellon as our undergraduate computer science (CS) environment becomes more balanced in three critical domains: gender, the mix of students and breadth of their interests, and the professional experiences afforded all students.

Student wins 'women in computing' award; Defying the stereotype that the fields of math and computer science are heavily male-dominated, Emily Jones ’11 recently saw success while competing at the Regional Celebration of Women in Computing (or “MinneWIC”). Jones’s research won the undergraduate best poster prize -- a trip to the Grace Murray Hopper Women in Computing conference in Atlanta next fall.

A link to the Mark Guzdial article about women in computing.

News from women in computing around the world.