Entrepreneur (own company: Exact Match ) |
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| The PRO::ICT database provides supportive advice and best practise solution in particular for parents, teachers at schools and colleges, youth trainers, job counsellors and human resource managers. |
Chapter 1: Introduction and Methodology
The research community searching for explanations to the problem of under-representation of women in ICT has grown rapidly during the last few years involving experts from fields of educational science, psychology and gender studies. The experts have an unanimous agreement that it would be too easy to suggest a single factor explaining the women’s difficult situation (Margolis, 2002). Therefore, we would like to draw attention to three key issues that may have a decisive impact on the career and job situation of women in ICT. In this project these key issues are commonly referred to as the 3M-scheme: mind – match – market:
Mindset relates to images, ways of thinking, attitudes and ways of dealing with ICT, especially with respect to following an ICT career path (for example self-esteem, role models etc.).
Match relates to the transfer of these mindsets to conditions of access and educational environments in the field of tertiary education in ICT (for example curriculum, study environment, study profiles etc.).
Market relates to the move of graduates to recruitment strategies, demands and perspectives on the relevant labour market (job profiles, maternity leave strategies etc.).
The 3M-approach provides the structure that will be used for categorizing the recommendations at the end of the study and it offers some orientation for the users of the platform to find modules that correspond to specific learning objectives. This also drives the PRO::ICT approach towards a direction that can be used in practise.
Applied Methods
The project applied diverse instruments of socio-economic research:
- Desk research - secondary material of studies from the fields of educational, psychological, social and socio-economic research;
- Interviews with girls and students representing the three transition phases at all age levels;
- Interviews with change agents from different European countries involved in the three transition phases such as teachers, educationalists (UK), human resource managers (Austria/Germany/Switzerland/Denmark) and consultants who play a (non-profit-oriented) role in the vocational guidance process (Netherlands/Bulgaria);
As a main task the project partners worked on a collection of best practice examples of innovative and process oriented approaches. The latter refers to the pedagogical methods used. The findings relate to the countries involved in the project and thus it is possible to highlight country-specific problems (e.g. low rate of female ICT work force in rural areas e.g. Denmark and Welsh region; vocational career advisory systems in the accession countries or reformed communist countries e.g. Bulgaria).
The partners involved in the study conducted interviews with different stakeholders. From these interviews, secondary study material and international best practice examples provide the basis for supporting recommendations to these change agents, and guide our work in developing gender-sensitive training material.
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