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Girls and IT: New Times, New Challenges

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Information Systems Development

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Abstract

With computers and the Internet bringing changes to every aspect of our lives, it is time to re-examine gender issues in Information Technology (IT). Five focus groups involving female and male high school students, male and female high school teachers and female parents were organised during a 4-week period. Each group was asked questions about children's attitudes to IT and the experiences that affect these attitudes, particularly within the context of the school. The data were analysed to find common themes, which are reported in this paper. The common themes identified were (a) lack of computers is no longer an issue; (b) IT is no longer seen as a male-dominated domain; (c) old attitudes still exist, but things are changing; (d) the school, and particularly teachers, can influence students' attitudes to IT and (e) parents have considerable influence on students' positive and negative attitudes to IT. The paper concludes that attitudes to IT amongst males and females are changing and that schools and parents have an opportunity to reverse the trend of females away from IT.

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  1. School of IT, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia

    Sandra Downes

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  1. Sandra Downes
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Correspondence to Sandra Downes .

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    Downes, S. (2009). Girls and IT: New Times, New Challenges. In: Wojtkowski, W., Wojtkowski, G., Lang, M., Conboy, K., Barry, C. (eds) Information Systems Development. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-68772-8_36

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-68772-8_36

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    • Print ISBN: 978-0-387-30403-8

    • Online ISBN: 978-0-387-68772-8

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