What is our excuse?

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It is that time of the year again: young men and women are applying for higher education, hopefully many of them excited about the transition to higher education and following their dreams. Close to 60% of all new applicants for higher education in Norway are women, but women are still a minority in IT and technology. There is a tiny improvement from last year’s 24,2% women applying to Information technology degrees, to 26,2% in April 2019 (Samordnaopptak).

Looking at the numbers of female applicants for the Information technology bachelor in the rural region is however depressing: only 1 woman among 20 applicants. Why are there so few women who dream about a future that includes IT competence? And why so few in this region?

Nordwit represented at PhD summer school on computer gaming

Åsa Cajander will be one of the teachers at a PhD summer school on Virtual Characters & Computer Game Technologies organised by Animatas. Animatas is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions project that aims to give researchers the necessary skills and international experience for a successful career. Animatas stands for Advancing intuitive human-machine interaction with human-like social capabilities for education in schools. Åsa Cajander’s topic for the summer school is on gender equality in academia and the work environment. She will talk about her experiences as a woman in computing, and also some research findings from careers in technology driven areas from the NordWit Centre of Excellence.

You can read more about the summer school here:

http://www.animatas.eu/workshops/summer-school-on-virtual-characters-for-computer-games/