It must be Gender Issues Thursday

Mildly interesting article about Alison Richards, who is making waves at a male-dominated level of academia. Further down the chain, Computer Clubs for Girls (CC4G) seem to be taking off. One can only hope that they do the right things, given the funding and press coverage they are getting. At a Women@CL talk about CC4G last year, concerns were raised about whether the girls were actually aware of the computer science behind the fun, pink activities, and the organisers weren't very reassuring on that score unfortunately. They also seemed quite happy to blow large amounts of cash on software, which seemed a poor choice, when they could have gone open source. This is reflected somewhat in the article - girls learning MS PowerPoint skills, eh? - not exactly computer science. I bet the "geeky, long-haired boys playing war games" (I quote) stereotypically associated with ICT won't be using PowerPoint when they hack around on computers, so whether CC4G is going to help these girls compete in the technology workplace of the future is debatable.

The Indy also has a piece about the history of cross-dressing, perhaps timed to coincide with the release of Breakfast on Pluto this weekend (recommended to me by a US-based friend). I was starting to feel I was hanging out at the Picturehouse a little too much, but I've since found that there are people who go there more often than me, even watching multiple films each week, perhaps due to not having a telly - good for them :-) So now I don't feel too predictable, despite planning to go again this weekend.

Back to an online debate about the genders of various flavours and incarnations of Mac...