Gender-Inclusive Software

Join us on Monday, October 8th for our next FutureTalks with OSU Distinguished Professor Margaret Brunett.

Gender inclusiveness in software companies is receiving a lot of attention these days, but it overlooks a potentially critical factor: software itself. Research into how individual differences cluster by gender shows that men and women often work differently with software when they are problem-solving (e.g., when programming, debugging, using spreadsheets, doing game-based learning, visualizing information, etc.) In this talk, Dr. Margaret Burnett will present a method called GenderMag. At the core of the method are 5 facets of gender differences drawn from a large body of foundational work on gender differences from computer science, psychology, education, communications, and women's studies. Results from field studies have been that software practitioners identified a surprisingly high number of gender-inclusiveness issues in their own software. Burnett will present these results, a quick peek at emerging GenderMag work in Open Source settings and in the classroom, and ways you can get involved.

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Event Details:
Doors will open at 5:30 for networking with light food and drink before the program starts promptly at 6pm. The program will conclude with a Q&A and should end by 7:30pm.
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Bio:
Margaret Burnett is an ACM Fellow, a CHI Academy member, and a Distinguished Professor at Oregon State Unversity. Her research on gender inclusiveness in technology -- especially in software tools for programming and problem-solving -- spans over 10 years. Burnett and her team systematically debunked misconceptions of gender neutrality in a variety of technology platforms, and then devised software features that help avert the identified problems. She has presented keynotes and invited talks on this topic in 9 countries. She serves on a variety of HCI and Software Engineering committees and editorial boards, and on the Academic Alliance Advisory Board of the U.S. National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT). More on Burnett can be found at: http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~burnett/