Another book of cartoons, this time illustrating some of the things (famous) men have said about women. When I was reading about Ada Lovelace I found it quite appalling that in her days men thought women were too mentally fragile to cope with mathematics or science.
In this book, Jackie Fleming ridicules that kind of thinking, sometimes by repeating what people like Darwin said -- she continually refers to Darwin and others as ‘geniuses’, and it becomes quite obvious fairly quickly that she does not quite regard them as geniuses when it comes to their ‘scientific’ conclusions about women. (The constant references to ‘genius’ are similar to Marc Anthony’s speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, in which he keeps referring to Brutus et al as ‘honourable men’.)
At other times, the cartoons and statements are silly, but no more so than the attitudes being ridiculed. For example, studying too much made women’s hair fall out.
A good corrective to some of the daft things men have said about women (and still do).
You can buy the book here: The trouble with women (Amazon affiliate link).
This review was first published in the Digital Education newsletter.
In this, the last of a three-part series on girls and women in computing, PhD student and Further Education lecturer Amanda Wilson describes how an early interest in computing followed by picking up everything she could while working led to a dream job.
In this, the second of a three-part series about girls and women in Computing, school student Ellie Gregson suggests why girls tend not to choose STEM subjects.
Young people love to use technology. In school, we jump at the opportunity to use the iPads for research, or to use laptops for typing up essays or creating PowerPoints in class. In my school, when an iPad trolley is dragged into the classroom at the start of a lesson, there is always a race between the students to the front of the classroom, desperate not to have to share it with others, or be stuck with a tablet with a 10% battery life remaining.
This is the first of three articles about girls and women in Computing.
On March 8th it was International Women's Day.
At last! Or, to use the vernacular, woo hoo! The latest edition of the Digital Education ezine is now out. It contains a round-up of products seen at Bett, articles on girls and women in technology, loads of links and book reviews. Here’s a detailed list of the contents:
One of the apparently insoluble problems of the age is how do you encourage more girls to take up Computing? I think a lot can be done, and have done so myself, but I wonder how far a lot of the effort fails to get to the heart of the issue, which could be the curriculum itself, the way it is taught, or a combination of the two?