Gender in Information Technology: Review of a Mentoring Initiative

There is a general lack of women in the Science, Engineering and Information technology research fields at all career levels. This is a worldwide phenomenon that seems related to social and cultural stereotypes. The Gender and Science ITC-irst group has investigated whose actions could be proposed to support the female researchers inside ITC-irst in spreading out effective role models and in improving their scientific skills. A first cycle of scientific lectures was organized in the winter 2002-2003. At the same time, a series of mentoring workshops was proposed with the main objective of increasing the experience of ITC-irst female researchers and to grow the self-esteem for all the participants. Given the positive results of the first initiatives, the Gender and Science ITC-irst group organized a second series of scientific lectures and mentoring in winter 2003-2004. All the activities were organized paying particular attention to gender issues. This paper describes the second series of activities, and their evaluatio