Women in Information Technology Initiatives in Canada: Towards Fact-based Evaluations

For more than a decade, government, the private sector, associations, universities and schools have initiated projects aimed at increasing the participation of women in information technology (IT). Despite these efforts, female enrolments in computer science, engineering and IT programs, have plateaued or even declined. While many initiatives report high levels of participant satisfaction, their other impacts are less clear. This exploratory study provides a meta-analysis of the program designs and evaluations of 70 such initiatives available in Canada. It assumes that programs need clearly defined assumptions, objectives and evaluation processes in order to be effective. It explores the assumptions that underlie the programs, the program elements and the forms of evaluation employed. The paper concludes that there is little systematic evaluation of these programs and that there is a need both to question some of their underlying assumptions and to develop more robust, multi-layered approaches to evaluation.