I've followed the discussions so far with some interest and, admittedly, some boredom. I've sat through innumerable "why aren't women into computers" discussions before, and to be honest this is just another one (although some interesting points have been raised, which I'll respond to separately if I get some time). I just wanted to throw back my own ideas about why I might be getting 40-60% women in my courses, so here they are: 1. Often my trainees are acquaintances or friends-of-friends or members of user groups that I belong to. Probably 80% of the people in my course know that I'm female when they enrol. I would guess that this might be encouraging to women, who realise that they won't find themselves in the middle of a "boys club" environment, and won't get less attention from the instructor (as often happens in classes from primary school to university and beyond). 2. I get the impression that the males are more likely to say "oh, I can do it myself" and try to learn from the man pages or the camel or "teach yourself visual perl++ for dummies in 24 hours" or some such thing. It could be a macho thing. Certainly the sysadmin types show this attitude. 3. I think the web aspect of it is actually quite small. I don't recall getting a single female "web designer" type through my courses. Most of them are sysadmins, and some are web developers of the primarily non-graphical kind (information focussed, usually from universities). Anyway, that's my take on the matter. K. -- Kirrily Robert -- <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- http://netizen.com.au/ Internet and Open Source Development, Consulting and Training Level 13, 500 Collins St, Melbourne VIC 3000 Phone: +61 3 9614 0949 Fax +61 3 9614 0948
