Second Blog Post in Our Series “Otherwise Practices With/in Computing” Now Available On Our Research Blog!

Our series Otherwise Practices With/in Computing continues with the second blog post Educating Tech Students About Gender - A Case Study From Hungary by Anna Szlavi.

"After a year of lockdowns, online family gatherings, digital education, and distance work, there is no doubt that the world has become immensely digitalized, creating a huge demand for tech professionals. Why is it then that women are still practically invisible in the field? As a matter of fact, only around 16.5% of the IT sector are women in the EU28 zone, according to Eurostat. The low representation of women in tech is clearly a social problem, part of the bigger framework of gender inequality. But the truth is, women’s scarcity in IT has economic and technological repercussions as well, so fixing the issue is both timely and relevant. But how can we do that? Well, there are a number of approaches we can take. To increase women’s involvement in IT, we can focus on “fixing the numbers” or “fixing the institutions” for example. Studies (including one on the present website), however, underline that the low number of women in IT cannot be efficiently addressed by either of those approaches. Instead, focusing on education and “fixing the knowledge” seems the most effective on the long run. Why is that? And how can we go about it? In this blog post, that is what I would like to share with you.

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