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 Thank you to everyone who attended the "Banana Skins, Bottlenecks and Elephant Traps: The Perilous Journey for Women in IT" event that we co-hosted with Barclays Capital on Tuesday 29th April 2008. The event was a great success with a full house of nearly 200 guests!
Philip Freeborn, CIO of Barclays Capital opened the evening and welcomed everyone to the event and to Barclays Capital. Maggie Berry, Director of womenintechnology.co.uk provided another short welcome to the event and an update of what's going at womenintechnology and then it was over to our key note speaker for the evening, Baroness Susan Greenfield.
Baroness Greenfield is Director of the Royal Institution and Professor of Synaptic Pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford. Her research is focused on brain physiology and she provided an entertaining view on her reasons for why fewer women pursue careers in technology and the sciences. During her very lively one hour presentation Susan debunked several myths about women working in technology, gave us all a crash course in neuroscience and explained how single sex genes are not connected to specific character traits. She also spoke about how we can attract more girls and women into technology not least by making IT more relevant to everyday life and providing creche facilities in the workplace for returners to work. She touched upon how important mentors are and described them as:
"someone who believes in your more than you believe in yourself".
It was an excellent, interesting and enlightening presentation and so a huge thank you goes to Susan for taking the time out to be our key note speaker and to answer questions from the audience during the Q&A. The books she mentioned during her presentation were ID: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century, The Private Life of the Brain and Affluenza by Oliver James.
After the formal part of the evening was finished, the event moved upstairs to the 30th floor of the Barclays building where the drinks reception was held. The views across Canary Wharf were amazing and the atrium area was suffused in a wonderful green glow from the lights. There was a charity raffle in aid of Aanchal Limited, a charity Barclays Capital support, that helps Asian women and their families who have suffered abuse/domestic violence - over £200 was raised.
Final thank you's go to Baroness Susan Greenfield for her super presentation "Banana Skins, Bottlenecks and Elephant Traps: The Perilous Journey for Women in IT", to Barclays Capital for hosting such a great event and for their sponsorship of womenintechnology.co.uk and thank you to everyone who attended. | 