Although the first computer programmers were women, and women remained in the information systems workforce even after the field became male-dominated, they continue to be a minority of the workforce. Jane Fountain, associate professor at the Kennedy School of Government and director of the Women in the Information Age Project, discusses the challenges of keeping women in the pipeline that leads from early interest in computing to full professional participation. Values in the Design of Information Systems. Systems that are hard to use, endanger privacy, and impede collaboration shape work and the workplace. Some features of information systems grow out of assumptions made by designers about who the users are and how they work or arise from the priorities of the organizations that produce or purchase systems.
All events are free and open to the public.