BCS: Women should be encouraged to enter IT profession
The manager of the British Computer Society's (BCS) Women's Forum has suggested that more women need to be encouraged to look at a career in the IT industry.
Jan Peters said that the benefits and rewards that are available from a career in the sector are not known to many women, particularly as it is not promoted in schools.
She stated that teachers and careers advisors are not aware of areas like computer research and software development in order to promote them.
Partly as a result of that, most girls looking at apprenticeships are going into fields like hairdressing and childcare, which tend to be quite low paid.
"We need to be encouraging girls to look at a broader selection of apprenticeships, so we are not just looking at people going into IT and computing through degree route, but through the whole
spectrum," she added.
According to the BCS' data from 2004, women only made up 14 per cent of its membership.
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