WORKING TOWARDS EQUALITY IN THE YEAR 2000
Sue Williams, Gillian Lovegrove and Christine Whitehouse,
School of Computing, Staffordshire University, Stafford, UK

ABSTRACT
By the year 2000, it is estimated that over 80% of the jobs within the UK will involve the use of
Information Technology. Concern has been expressed by academia and industry regarding the
decrease of women entering IT related courses and subsequently the IT profession, causing a
reduction in the availability of skilled human resources with a gender imbalance. Staffordshire
University's IT EQUATE project (Equal opportunities for girls in Information Technology) was
established in October 1993.  It was formed as an active research project to promote the
understanding and awareness of IT opportunities amongst girls.  The research involves a
partnership between the University and three local schools.  It continues work commenced as a
pilot project in the London Docklands and Hampshire by the University of Southampton.  The
project aims to develop strategies for changing attitudes and eliminating institutional barriers
and gender-stereotyping, which deprive girls of the opportunities for involvement in IT,
particularly aimed at pupils in the lower secondary schools from the ages of 13 to 15 years. 
Progressive workshops and events have been held for girls, teachers, parents and careers
advisors.  Perceptions and influences have been analysed from the inception of the project
which will be used to measure its success and effectiveness.

The paper briefly describes the programme of events to date, details of the research undertaken
and proposals for the continuing development of strategies for the future.

Our most exciting and innovative session involved visual and audio link- up to Universities
in America and Australia via a network created for collaborative research on the Internet
which impressed both parents and their offspring alike so much so that we had to put a time
limit on the session otherwise they would have been there all night!
KEYWORDS:  K3.0, K3.1
Computers & Education - General
Computer Users in Education

1.	INTRODUCTION
The era of the information explosion is here in reality. Universities and schools alike are more
and more using Internet and CD-ROMs to access all kinds of information. Education will
increasingly emphasise the use of information rather than the regurgitation of information itself.

In this age of information and computers, with equal opportunities high on the agenda not only
for many schools and higher educational institutions but also for many companies, it would
be reasonable to assume that girls as well as boys would seize the opportunities presented to
them by careers in information technology. However, as described in a previous paper at
GASAT [Lovegrove 1993], despite efforts by universities through Women into Computing
workshops for girls and for women returners, and other projects effected through the Women
into Science and Engineering (WISE) and Women into Information Technology (WIT) initiatives
[Virgo et al, 1991], only a small proportion of girls are taking up careers in computing. Women
show themselves to be very capable in careers in IT with a significant number of them entering IT
later in life. Unfortunately this late entry in general delays career progression and so their
representation at management level is small, which is regrettable.

There are many papers, including [Culley 1986, Ellis 1987, Lippitt 1974, Whyte 1986] and
others in [Lovegrove and Segal 1991], which describe the established and funded research in
this broad area of girls and equal opportunities in IT. Most of this research is in the form of
observation and recommendations for change and has been published over the last decade.
The IT EQUATE project is an attempt to bring about change through action research, working
with small groups of girls involved in a series of events, to correctly identify ideas and strategies
which can be used to bring about change.

2.	EVOLUTION OF THE IT EQUATE PROJECT
Between 1990 and 1992 a pilot project based at the University of Southampton and funded
mainly by IBM and the London Docklands Development Corporation, took place in co-
operation with Hampshire and London Docklands Local Education Authorities (LEA's) and
participating schools.  Full details of the results of this pilot project can be found in [Lovegrove
et al 1994a].
The main areas considered for investigation were:
+	computer clubs;
+	liaison with feeder primary schools;
+	teachers of year 8 girls developing girls' computing expertise within a curriculum area;
+	links with industry;
+	teacher placements in IT-related business or industry;
+	influencing parental attitudes;
+	bringing the issue of equal opportunities to the attention of governors;
+	careers - in-depth discussion with careers teachers and updating IT related careers literature
/ visits from women in IT;
+	visits from the WISE bus.

Involvement in the action research project at any level - from simply an initial telephone contact
through initial visits, consultations, questionnaire delivery and finally the positive action
research, the schools could be considered to be affected by the project in that their level of
awareness of the situation was raised. The length of time between completing the initial and
impact questionnaires varied between 8 months and a year. There was no significant difference
in replies from the girls between the initial and impact questionnaires other than an increase in
confidence with computing. This would seem to imply that the reasons for current attitudes in
girls are quite deep-rooted, probably with origins in UK society's attitudes to computing as a
profession and programmers as people, and not easy to shift. 

Strategies for the future might therefore be regarded as being of two types; one is associated
with policy and management with respect to computing within schools, and the other
actively promoting and supporting computing as a suitable and fulfilling occupation for girls. It
was in this latter area that the Staffordshire IT EQUATE project decided to concentrate,
using only three schools local to the University [Lovegrove et al 1994b].

3.	STAFFORDSHIRE IT EQUATE
The plan was to:
+	work with two or three schools intensively;
+	start with committed schools who would actively support the programme;
+	work the programme over a three year period;
+	continually try to support a "pro-IT" careers environment around the girls, including a range of careers involving information systems;
+	provide a programme for curricula materials, computer club materials, management ideas,
industrial liaison/mentoring/visits/role models, parent involvement and parent workshops,
careers videos, self-discovery/equal opportunities/workshops for girls, university visits and
workshops.

3.1	The Three Schools
The three schools chosen in October 1993 were from completely different backgrounds:
+	an independent girls' school (ind) situated in a small village with an international catchment
area (274 pupils, age 5-18 years);  
+	a mixed state school (urban) situated on the outskirts of an industrial town with a local
catchment area (800 pupils, age 11-16 years);  
+	a mixed state school (rural) in a village located on the outskirts of a County town with a
local catchment area (1140 pupils, age 11-18 years).

We started with an investigation into the participating schools, in March 1994.

The ratio of female to male teachers involved in IT was predominantly female in the all-girls
school and male in the other two.  IT teaching differed from school to school, partly due to
the age range.  Only the independent school had a junior department (from 7- 11 years) and
here all children studied IT for 80 minutes each week.  The junior feeder schools for the
other schools come within the 'Pyramid Development Programme' run by Staffordshire
Education Computer Centre (SECC) which provides funding, support and training for IT within
schools.   From the ages of 11-14 years, all schools were teaching IT to the National Curriculum
Key Stage 3 for approximately 40-50 minutes each week.  From the ages 15-16 years, a variety
of subjects such as GCSE in IT, RSA - CLAIT, GCSE in Business with 3 modules in IT and IT
Key Stage 4 were studied at the schools. So far, this was very encouraging. IT was studied by
all children regardless of age and sex. However, it was from the ages of 17-18 years that very
little IT was taught at any of the schools. No school offered 'A' level Computing; however the
rural school offered a BTEC Diploma in Business and Finance with IT modules. We were also
informed that changes to the GCSE syllabus were about to take place.

All schools required pupils to take 9 GCSE subjects with 2 English, Maths, 2 Sciences and
a Foreign Language being compulsory to all. Technology GCSE including IT modules
was compulsory in the two state schools.

We looked at the hardware and software used by the schools, all had a wide range of
software, educational and games running on a variety of machines.  The two state schools also
had a range of CD-ROMS and the independent school had plans for a new IT laboratory
with CD-ROMS and other multi-media machines.

To complete the survey, we inspected the careers department, paying particular attention
to computing careers.  It was interesting to note that the careers' software used by one school
did not find SYSTEMS ANALYST when searching for COMPUTER careers.  Finally, we
asked about Computer Clubs.  The independent and county run schools did not run clubs
but provided open access to computers which was semi-supervised.  The urban school runs
very popular clubs for both girls and boys on Tuesday and Friday for pupils and Wednesday
for staff (this latter session is very encouraging).

3.2	Aims - Staffordshire IT EQUATE
Whilst the initial main aims of the IT EQUATE project were to:
+	increase the awareness of girls to careers involving computing;
+	develop strategies for encouraging girls to enter computing related courses;
+	raise awareness within schools and in the home to computing careers and related issues.
A secondary set of aims have been formulated over the past two years, which are to:
+	raise general awareness to the dramatic fall in the number of girls
entering computer related courses;
+	raise girls awareness to the attractive and long term career opportunities that the computing
industry can offer them;
+	determine and create the materials that need to be produced and put into schools in order
to consolidate and reiterate the IT EQUATE message.

3.3	The IT EQUATE Project in Action
The first IT EQUATE event took place at Staffordshire University in February 1994 - it was a
day workshop for thirty three schoolgirls.  They were given demonstrations of multimedia, to
illustrate how information could be presented by computer using the forms of video, sound, text
and graphics to stimulate the learning process: for example, students being able to choose the
direction, format and speed of their learning. The girls thoroughly enjoyed the demonstration of
the transformation of the facial image of one of their friends to that of a cheetah, using the
technique of morphing - as often used in the television industry. Hands-on experience on the
computers gave the girls an insight into graphical capabilities, whilst they built six foot paper
towers from no more than A4 paper, to simulate the need for team work, adhering to a
specification and problem solving skills required by the computing industry.  The day also
involved a computing career talk and discussion.

Teachers from the three schools and careers personnel associated with them then became pupils
at the University for an evening session following the girls' event, to be given the same IT
EQUATE experience as the girls. The idea was to stimulate conversation about IT careers and
to support the girls in any subsequent classes involving computers. A second University
workshop for the same girls in November 1994 built on the themes and ideas of the initial event,
provided more hands-on experience, as requested and aimed to further develop the career
information. The girls linked into the Internet, accessing information from Peru, Colorado,
Australia and Spain.  They mailed the BBC radio programme 'The Big Byte' with information of
their involvement in the IT EQUATE project.  Groups of girls took videos of the Internet
workshop and created text relating to Staffordshire IT EQUATE, in order to create a page of
multimedia to publicise IT EQUATE to the world on the Internet.

The careers workshop centred on the NCET/WIT computing careers video 'Why Me, Why
IT' followed by talks given by female students from Staffordshire University and role
models from industry.  To give a clearer picture of the computing world the speakers covered
their qualifications and career paths, how computing differed from what they had learnt at
school, what their role now consisted of, career progression and obstacles, salaries
and responsibilities, and finally, life in a male dominated world - to give a clearer picture of
the computing world.  The next activity involved the girls in the creation of cartoons
and business adverts to complete the day.

It was not only necessary for the girls to experience computing within the University
environment but also within the Industrial environment to see for themselves that computing is
not just a 'boring terminal based' job within the real world.  The girls saw computer control in
action when they visited the brewing industry - the canning and packaging department with its
automatically driven processes and can handling robot was an awesome sight.  A visit to the
china pottery industry provided an awareness of computer aided design and explained the role
played by computers to support information, from the receipt of an order to the despatch of the
final product.  For the girls, the opportunity to talk to personnel creating computer software
within an environment driven by the product, was invaluable. 

The Staffordshire IT EQUATE project then looked to influence further the environment around
the girls.  Seventy parent, teacher and pupils (including boys) attended another evening event
which had the audience on the edge of their seats whilst video conferencing using the Internet
was demonstrated.  America and Australia responded, with a pupil talking directly to the
international respondents whose images were displayed in front of the audience.

4.	THE FINDINGS - PERCEPTIONS AND ATTITUDES
Throughout the programme we have obtained opinions, facts and attitudes of all
participants from questionnaires and surveys.

4.1	Feedback
At our first workshop in February 1994 we provided a two part questionnaire.  The first part
was used to give us feedback on the day. The overwhelming response was that the day was
interesting, particularly the image processing and the multimedia demonstrations, and the girls
preferred more 'hands-on' experience with less 'talking'.

			INTERESTING	OK	DON'T 	BORING	WASTE OF
			 				KNOW			TIME
Workshop		30		3	-		-		-
Welcome			5		21	3		4		-
Practical		24		9	-		-		-
	Careers		8		19	1		3		2
Tower			24		9	-		-		-
Image Processing32		1	-		-		-
Multimedia		32		1	-		-		-

The second part of the questionnaire was dedicated to details about the girls' studies.  We were
interested in finding out in which subjects IT was used, what the girls were studying and
whether they would consider 'A' level Computing or BTEC Diploma in Computer Studies.  The
aim was to use this information to ascertain the influence the project was having on the girls,
none of whom had chose to study IT or Computing at a higher level than GCSE.

4.2	Influence
The second workshop in November 1994 attempted to give the girls the hands-on
experience they had requested and as can be seen clearly from the results was found to be a
success.

WORKSHOP 2 	
			INTERESTING	OK	DON'T 	BORING	WASTE OF
							KNOW			TIME
Workshop		18		6	0		0		0
Internet		14		10	0		0		0
Cartoon			7		15	0		2		0
Advert			22		2	0		0		0

 This in itself was not enough because we wanted to measure the influence we had had
during the day. We wanted to find out also what, if anything, the girls used computers for  and
if they knew about the opportunities in the computing profession. We wondered whether
their knowledge was related to their home and social background and/or their school. 

We deliberately slanted the day to provide the girls with the opportunities to obtain
information about prospects within computing. Role models were present from several
companies, each with differing backgrounds who mingled with the girls throughout the
day talking to them on an informal basis  as well as providing short presentations
describing their roles in their organisations.

4.3	Perceptions
The following are extracts from the questionnaire which is being used as a major part of
our research.

MAJOR QUESTIONNAIRE EXTRACT
COMPUTER USE		RURAL  INDEPENDENT	URBAN
Computer at Home 	
	Yes				7		6			6
	No				1		1			2
Unknown				0		0			1
				
Use it			
	Yes				6		5			6
	No				0		0			0
Occasional			1		1			0
				
Timespan	
Once a week			2		3			1
Twice a week 		2		0			1 
More				2		1			3
Daily				0		1			1
Occasional			0		1			0 

Reason	
Homework			3		0			0 
Games				1		0			1 
Both				2		1			4
Several				0		5			1

The majority of girls have access to a computer at home, though most only use it once or twice a
week, mainly for homework/coursework and to play games. It was also noted that as one
school takes boarders, the girls used a computer at home for other activities.

COMPUTER USE	RURAL	INDEPENDENT	URBAN
Comfortable?	
	Yes			8			7		8
	No			0			0		0
				
Encouraged?	
	Yes			7			6		8
	No			1			1		0
				
Intend to Learn more?	
	Yes			3			3
	No			5			3		4
Don't 			0			1		0
know			
				
Intend to Study?	
	Yes			2			1		3 
 	No			5			6		5
	Don't 		1			0		0 
	know			

Knowledge necessary   	
	Essential	1			1		2 
	for Careers	
	Desirable	6			4		0
	Useful		1			1		6  
	N/A			0			1		0

The next part of the questionnaire attempted to find out what perceptions the girls have
with regard to their future in terms of using  a computer within their careers.

Although the girls were all comfortable with using computers and in the majority of
cases encouraged to use them, less than 50% saw the need to learn more. This was surprising
as the next question showed that they knew computing knowledge was very useful with
respect to their future careers.

The final section of the  questionnaire was handed out at the beginning and the end of the day
to test whether they had gained useful information during the day. They were asked to name as
many job titles as possible which are connected to the computing profession and to briefly 
describe what was meant by certain terms. We were gratified to discover that although initially
they found it difficult to answer these questions, by the end of the day 76% were able to
identify at least one job title and 68% identified more than five. 

4.4.	Industrial Visits
Part of the programme includes industrial visits, where the girls were introduced to different
uses of computing.

The analysis of one visit is shown below. 
INDUSTRIAL VISIT
			RURAL	IND.	URBAN	TOTAL
CAD	
Interesting	6		4		3		13
	OK		1		2		4		7
	Boring	1		0		0		1
					
Site Visit	
Interesting	8		5		0		13	
		OK	0		1		5		6
	Boring	0		0		2		2
					
Systems Analyst 
Interestin	3		1		3		7
Role Model
	OK		5		5		4		14
	Boring	0		0		0		0

Sales	
Interesting	4		4		1		9 	 
Support		
		OK	2		2		6		10		
	Boring	2		0		0		2

The overall impression obtained from these results varies between the schools. This
was attributed to the fact that the Urban school is actually based in the area visited and has
a strong industrial bias, with parents and peers involved in the industry. The other two schools
were more interested, however, all the girls agreed that they would like further visits.


4.5	Parental influence

One of the aspects which seems to have been neglected when trying to ascertain why girls are
not entering the computer profession and computer related courses in higher education has been
the influence of their parents. Our attempt to rectify this situation was to invite parents from
the participating schools along with their children, to see for themselves what their daughters
were experiencing throughout the programme. This was a wonderful evening , involving links to
universities in America, France and Australia via an audio-visual link on the Internet. Having
interested the parents, most have volunteered to assist us with our research which is still on-
going.  The participants were asked to rate the evening on a scale of 1-5, the latter being the
most interesting. 

5.	CONCLUSIONS
We started this project with the aim to develop strategies for changing attitudes and eliminating
the institutional barriers which deprive girls of the opportunities for involvement in IT at all
levels, particularly in the lower secondary schools. From our initial studies we found that, as
expected, most girls came to the IT EQUATE project with a 'clouded image' of computing
careers based on their life experiences of computing. They equated the meaning of the
computing profession to be word processing, spreadsheets and databases. Some of them
admitted that computing was boring and dismissed it due to peer pressure. We discovered that
some parents saw computing as a male stereotyped career and here again the 'clouded image' of
computing careers was evident. As the project progressed, we succeeded in raising the
awareness of the girls, their schools and their parents.  We have produced a satisfactory format
for workshops and a programme to promote the interest in computing and to highlight the
suitability of careers in the computing profession.  However, contrary to expectations, we have
not achieved positive results in influencing the initial direction the girls were taking, with regard
to a choice of careers.  This had led us to speculate that our target age should be lowered to
raise the interest of girls before they have chosen their GCSE options.  In order to aid girls at this
crucial time, we have decided to investigate parental influence and peer pressure further.

6.	IT EQUATE IN THE FUTURE

Staffordshire University's work is unique in the UK in that it is working with a small number of
girls and spreading the message thickly, in order to get its strategies right, as opposed to
delivering the message thinly to a larger number of girls. It has become very clear that material
needs to be created to be used in schools which allows consolidation and reiteration of the IT
EQUATE message.  Provided that funds become available then the Staffordshire University
team can continue to put their plans and ideas into action and raise the project to become more
high profile by looking at cultural changes and influencing government and industry through the
media.

REFERENCES

[Lippitt 1974] Identifying, documenting, evaluating and sharing innovative classroom practices.
Final report to the Office of Education, Department of Health, Education and Welfare (USA). 
[Culley 1986] Gender Differences and Computing in Secondary Schools.
Loughborough: Department of Education, UK.

[Whyte 1986] Girls into Science and Technology: the story of a project. Routledge and Kegan
Paul.

[Ellis 1987] Equal Opportunities and Computer Education in the Primary School. 
Equal Opportunities Commission.

[Lovegrove 1991]  Where are all the girls now? In Lovegrove, G.L. & Segal B. (eds.) Women into
Computing: Selected Papers 1988-1990, Springer-Verlag, pp. 33-44. 
Lovegrove, G.L. & Segal B. (eds.) Women into Computing: Selected Papers 1988-1990, Springer-
Verlag pp. 367-376.

[Virgo 1991] 	The Women into Information Technology (WIT) Campaign. In  	Lovegrove, G.L. &
Segal B. (eds.) Women into Computing: Selected Papers 1988-1990, Springer-Verlag, pp. 276-
285.

[Lovegrove 1993]	The IT EQUATE Action Research Project in the UK, GASAT-7, Waterloo,
Canada, pp 68-77 

[Lovegrove 1994a] Staffordshire IT EQUATE: Project and Plans, IFIP Conference on Women
Work and Computerization, Manchester, UK, pp 511-518

[Lovegrove 1994b]	Women and Computing: IT EQUATE, Staffordshire University and
Schools,  International Conference on The Development & Role of 	Women in Technology,
Beijing, China,  pp. 189-195