British Computer Society: Ready for the Natural History Museum?

There's been much PR puff in the computing press in recent weeks concerning Wendy Hall, the new president of the British Computer Society. She is said to be concerned about the small and declining proportion of women in IT.

Well, Wendy, there are at least two things that could be done to make the BCS more accessible to women already in IT and not in the BCS (the vast majority). I've had totally unsatisfactory correspondence with the BCS in recent years about both:

1. Full-time IT students (99% male or thereabouts, going by my informal straw polls in university computer science lectures), who are often funded and have all kinds of cheapo concessions (e.g. no council tax, free entry to many organisations and events) have extremely cheap membership of BCS, *even when then graduate and are in full-time and very well-paid employment*. Part-time IT students (more often than not female, often caring for family/relatives, that being the reason they are part-time, are often 'job changers', are rarely funded and have no concessions of any kind) pay full fees to join BCS, no matter what their circumstances. I have over the years received various pieces of poorly argued waffle from BCS head office to justify this position. It is unjustifiable.

2. The BCS women's group, unlike *the vast majority* of BCS special interest groups (or SIGs), requires any applicant to already be a full member of BCS (i.e. to have jumped throught a whole series of professional hoops) before joining the SIG. I did receive a response to my email to the SIG concerning this policy, but it was pretty meaningless. I know that BCS is now changing its membership strategy, to allow people to join BCS at an earlier stage in their careers (from next May), but is this SIG's policy putting up artificial fences or what?

Never mind attracting more women into the profession. What are you doing about women already in the world of IT, who you are now complaining are leaving? Discriminating against them and turning them away. The vast majority of people in the new media industries (where there is a significant proportion of women) couldn't give a fig about BCS: to them, it's an arthritic dinosaur, ready to be relegated to the Natural History Museum. Maybe one day BCS will stop being dominated by elderly gentlemen meeting quarterly in the engineering departments of provincial universities, but in the meantime Wendy has her work cut out.