> > Grace Hopper, Ada Hutchinson (unsure of last name), many others. > > There's definitely no lack of female role models in computer > > science. > >_if_ they're covered in school. I've never heard of Grace or Ada. :) Well, to be utterly fair, most people couldn't name a single computer scientist. At a stretch, some *might* recognize the name of Turing. >After high-school, if you had asked me to name some female scientists, I >think only would have come up with Madame Curie. That is typical and unfortunate. >I'm sure the role-models exist, the issue is whether the schools are >mentioning them and crediting them properly for what contributions they >made (whether it's a big contribution, or a small one). It's a difficult task. On the one hand, I think that it's necessary to acknowledge critical contributions, regardless of gender, and would agree that women (and non-whites) do get underrepresented. On the other hand, I would hate to see a resort to tokenism where X numbers of female scientists are recognized, regardless of the worth of their contributions. I think that quickly leads to the impression that any women in the field were only minor contributors and that all the *real* work was done by the usual suspects. _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus