ICT and girls: the need for a large scale intervention programme

In recent years there have been fewer students enrolling into ICT courses and subsequently there has been a significant decline in ICT graduates. The decline in participation by females has been even greater than for males resulting in a further widening of the gender imbalance in this discipline. Much of the research indicates that it is the early years that influence children's decisions regarding career choice. For many girls, although
they are initially interested and engaged with IT in their early years of schooling, this fades as they reach middle and senior secondary school. Reasons for this decline in interest include the perceptions that, among other things, IT is ‘geeky’, male dominated and generally not a people focused career. There have been many initiatives to try and redress the problem however most are localised, poorly funded and depend very much on one key individual usually in schools. This paper briefly describes the outcomes of the Young Girls ICT project designed to encourage girls to continue with computing. The paper considers what the best options might be for encouraging more girls to continue to study computing.

Drivers of the distribution of fisher effort at Lake Alaotra, Madagascar

Understanding how fishers make decisions is important for improving management of fisheries. There is debate about the extent to which small-scale fishers follow an ideal free distribution (IFD) - distributing their fishing effort efficiently according to resource availability rather than being influenced by social factors or personal preference. Using detailed data from 1800 fisher catches and from semi-structured interviews with over 700 fishers at Lake Alaotra, the largest inland fishery in Madagascar, we show that fishers generally conform to IFD. However, there were differences in catch: effort relationships between fishers using different gear types as well as other revealing deviations from the predictions of IFD. Fishers report routine as the primary determinant of their choice of fishing location, explaining why they do not quickly respond to changes in catch at a site. Understanding the influences on fishers' spatial behaviour will allow better estimates of costs of fishing policies on resource users, and help predict their likely responses. This can inform management strategies to minimise the negative impacts of interventions, increasing local support for and compliance with rules.