Although many researches from the past few years looked at the reasons behind the leaky pipeline of women in ICT, the reality is that women are still a diminishing minority in ICT professions.

WIL member Cecilia Castaño, together with Juliet Webster and Rachel Palmen, hosted an international conference at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institut (IN3) in Barcelona which assembled researchers from 11 countries, who are examining traditional forms of gender discrimination through a lifecycle approach.

Given the fact that women are confronted with different challenges and opportunities at different life stages, the main lines of research looked at emerging forms of social exclusion associated with gender in the ICT sector and the solutions to deal with it. Among the practices discussed:

a comparative analysis of policies for gender equality in science in Europe

a UK/Spain comparative analysis of women in ICT throughout the lifecycle

workforce mobility in science and technology

women in computer sciences and telecommunications higher education in Spain

secondary school students and their study choice

gender at the interface of art, science and technology.

The presentations can be found on the website of the conference here.

The forthcoming 6th European conference on Gender and ICT will be held in Sweden, March 8th – 10th.

Cecilia Castaño is professor of Applied Economics at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and director of a Masters Program on Gender Equality. She is also the Director of a Research Program on Gender and ICT at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institut (IN3, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona). Visiting Professor at MIT, UC Berkeley and Harvard University.