Ever since the 2003 movie Calendar Girls, about the exploits of a group of Yorkshire Women's Institute members who doffed their clobber for charity back in 1999, it's become the first thing that pops into the minds of unoriginal types everywhere.
The latest outing is Screen Goddesses Of IT:
FEMALE IT professionals have posed for a provocative calendar to try and shake off their industry's geeky image and encourage young women to consider a computing career.Following one tedious idea with another, the calendar features IT gals in cliched re-shoots of famous movie images.
Gold Coast-based IT expert Sonja Bernhardt said the motivation for the calendar was the rapidly declining number of women taking up computer studies and careers.
Self-appointed star model Bernhardt sets the mood, posing rather more stiffly than sensually as she scowls grumpily out of the calendar's cover shot, a re-take of the rose petal shot from the excreable American Beauty.
Bernhardt says she wanted to show girls that 'it's not nerds in the IT industry' but the entire calendar is decidedly nerdy.
She bemoans:
"Five years ago, women made up 25 per cent of the IT industry worldwide and now it's down to 16 per cent...Actually, one of the biggest barriers to entry is that the IT industry is grossly oversupplied with graduates.
"Statistics show us that one of the biggest barriers to entry is the perception of the industry."
If you want girls to get ahead and strike a blow for equity, you might encourage them to become carpenters or brickies, two trades in which there's a huge shortage of labour and pay is through the roof. In more traditional female trades, Australia is so short of hairdressers we're importing them from Europe.
But no, let's keep encouraging youngsters to waste a few years after school getting degrees in glutted industries and fairytale professions.
-- Nick
No comments:
Post a Comment