Short presentation: - Mary Chilver, IT Project manager, Oxford Women Training scheme

Mary's role at Oxford Women's Training Scheme is to lead its IT training and capacity building project - e.qual.it. She came to IT as a business user, went on to train as a trainer and also worked as a community advice worker. Mary completed a research project based on her experience at OWTS called "Who knows best?" examining the issues of curricular choice and values.

Email: mchilver@owts.org.uk

website : http://www.owts.org.uk

Forum: "What Else You Need or WEYN"

Women present for training in IT often as a "distress purchase", which is to say that, rather than a burning desire to engage with the technology, they fear they will be left behind if they do not achieve computer literacy.
We then need to raise aspirations: to show that even the introductory course can lead to a career as an IT practitioner rather than an office worker. Or IT could be something they use to support another career or voluntary work. We also need to show that technical skills in isolation do not lead to satisfying employment. All this needs to be achieved with women facing multiple disadvantage such as having missed out on education. WEYN therefore is what we do in addition to technical skills to enable women to access opportunities.