BCS Supports National Women in Engineering Day

23rd June 2014

Following its recent Women in IT campaign which featured 30 women throughout May, BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, is continuing to champion IT as a profession for all by celebrating National Women in Engineering Day which takes place on 23 June.

The celebration will include a Festival of Wikipedia that will see volunteers adding, updating, and improving Wikipedia entries of women in technology, dead or alive, to ensure that their contribution to the profession is recorded and celebrated.

The event, which takes place at Southampton Solent University, has been jointly arranged by BCSWomen, BCS Open Source SG, Hampshire Branch, the Royal Academy of Engineering and Southampton Solent University.

Professor Margaret Ross MBE, a member of BCSWomen and chair of the Hampshire Branch says: "We've organised several Festivals of Wikipedia across the UK over the two years as we believe it's important that we accurately record the contribution women have made to our profession."

Recent research by the Institute and eSkills shows that less than one in six (16%) of the 1,129,000 people working as IT specialists in the UK were women.

Gillian Arnold, Chair of BCSWomen adds: "The continuing decline in women entering the IT profession is a real threat for the UK and an issue that clearly we need to address. While there are some good indications in our recent research that there is progress is some areas (for example - an increase in the number of women working in IT part-time), it's still not enough. We need to work together, as individuals, educators and businesses to tackle the issue. We know girls and women are good at computing and we need to translate that ability into action, and inspire them to see IT as a career option that offers them great career opportunities."

BCSWomen, in conjunction with BCS Hampshire Branch, The Royal Academy of Engineering and Southampton Solent University are also hosting a workshop on the same day, entitled: Encouraging Girls and Women into Technology, which will offer an introduction to key mentoring skills and best mentoring practices as well as some ways of kick-starting the mentoring process.