The “Invited Change Agents” panel at this second day of the
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing features the
three women who won this year’s 2007 Anita Borg Change Agent Awards:
- Wafa Abdul Rahman AlMansoori (Bahrain)
- Zeinab Safar (Egypt)
- Irina Khomeriki (Georgia)
This award was created by Turing Award and inaugural Anita Borg Technical
Leadership Award winner, Fran Allen (IBM Fellow, retired). Fran was in
today’s audience. Change agents
work in their community to attract and support women in technology.
Recipients are recognized for their technical leadership and advocacy work.
The Hopper Conference is remarkable for the geographic diversity of its
participants (and for its lack of gender diversity, being almost all women);
so, these three are not the only women here from their areas of the world.
However, they are remarkable for their accomplishments and vision.
Dr. Safar talked about some of the barriers she faces in Egypt:
- 30% women illiterate, 20% men illiterate
- Language, social, and cultural barriers for girls and women
- Lack of access to computers for girls (boys have more access if there
are computers available) - Encouragement and permission is needed for girls to become educated (fathers need to make opportunity for women to be trained). However,
once girls are in the school system, they can continue and succeed.
IT is popular and women succeed in the field professionally and
represent 30% of the IT sector.
Dr. Khomeriki and Dr. AlMansoori said that their countries shared
many of these same problems. They each added that there was a generation
difference, with the younger people being more computer capable.
Dr. AlMansoori said that Bahrain literacy is 98% in the under-50 age group.
She said that men needed to be mentors for women so that women could learn
to do more than keep the home and take care of children.
Dr. Safar said that she hoped women would do something for women,
to help women in Egypt
to learn more about Information Technology. She looks to NGOs
(non-governmental organizations) and private donors (like industry and the
Anita Borg Institute) for support. Dr. Khomeriki talked about internet
use in Georgia (3.75 users per 100 people, often by way of a smokey
cyber cafe) and how important it was to have quick information access.
Dr. AlMansoori said it was hard to get program funding in Bahrain
because everyone knows her country is rich. Also, Bahrain is a small
country and only boys can work out of the country, so women have fewer
job opportunities.
The moderator asked a question from one of last year’s Change Agent
Award winners: what had the three learned by attending Hopper 2007,
and what would they do differently?
- Dr. Safar said that she should have brought a student, and also
since the Hopper Conference includes about half students, that she should
get more students to participate in her conferences in Egypt. - Dr. Khomeriki said she had a new point of view.
- Dr. AlMansoori
said she would have looked for a mentor to enrich her
experience. She plans to establish a mentoring program in Bahrain for
students, Engineers, and fresh graduates to bring out their best. A
mentoring program will encourage people to seek help from others who
know how to do things better. She wants them to know that seeking
improvement is not admitting inability. She is looking for help to
set up this new mentoring program.
I gave Dr. AlMansoori the 2006
“Mentoring for Employee Development” 2-page handout from the National
Center for Women & Information Technology
(NCWIT), a reference to Sun’s
http://research.sun.com/SEED/
web site about the SEED Engineering mentoring program which I manage,
and my card. I hope she will follow up with me! It would be very interesting
to follow up on today’s discussion.
Official
GHC 2007 Blogger. You may comment on this blog by visiting the
GHC Forum. You
can find me at
http://blogs.sun.com/katysblog.
KatysBlog 