Hum… une chance qu’on fait pas ça en médecine…..
Tiens au lieu de choisir les informaticiens sur des qualitées reliées aux types d’aptitudes requises par le métier, choisissons des designers de mode! Une chance qu’on fait pas la même chose en médecine, on aurait peut-être des bons petits points de couture sur les cicatrices, mais….
Getting Women Back Into IT
| Carnegie Mellon University seems to have discovered a formula to halt the exodus of women from careers in IT and computers: Emphasize the creative potential of computing, not the bits and bytes. |
Buried deep in a story Tuesday in The New York Times, Computer Science Takes Steps to Bring Women to the Fold, computer science professor Lenore Blum points out that Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science is shifting its emphasis away from programming proficiency to one that sees computing strongly linked to many fields.
The Pittsburgh university is battling the nerd factor too often associated with computing that turns off many high school students to the IT field. And, that image of a geek writing code in an office cubicle turns off more girls than boys.
Carnegie Mellon once demanded high overall achievement and programming know-how to gain admittance. Not any more. Now, Blum told The Times, high overall achievement combined with broad interests, diverse perspectives and whether applicants seem to have potential to be future leaders are the criteria to get admitted.
The new admission criteria seem to be working, with the number of women enrolled in computer science programs at Carnegie Mellon having soared to nearly 40 percent form 8 percent, she said.
Not everyone is happy, though. This good news for girls could spell bad tidings for some boys. A backlash has surfaced among some parents whose sons have been denied admission by Carnegie Mellon. Blum, quoting one parent, told the newspaper: “My son has three patents, how come he did not get into Carnegie Mellon?”
Let’s hope others schools follow Carnegie Mellon’s lead to halt the flight of women from IT. As a CIO Insight analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows, 76,000 fewer women worked in IT and computer-related jobs last year than they did in 2000, while overall employment in those high-tech occupations rose.
Still, as Blum and other experts told The Times, it’s not just about women in IT. Factors driving women from IT could steer men away, too. “Women,” Blum said, “are the canaries in the coal mine.” Fewer high schools, whether boys or girls, applying to computer science and IT programs would be sad, not only for those of us who care about IT, but for our economy as well.
Mais même si y’a pu de gars en médecine, en pharmacie est-ce qu’on pense à changer les standards d’entrée, à prendre des gens non qualifiés sous prétexte qu’ils sont du bon sexe! Après ça va être la couleur! Je pensais qu’on luttait contre la strégégation, même chance et même standards pour tous…. mon cul ouais!