A Town Meeting: SIGCSE Committee on Expanding the Women-in-Computing Community

In January 2004, we organized the second SIGCSE Committee ("Expanding the Women-in-Computing Community"). The SIGCSE Board approved the charter, because the underrepresentation of women in computing is an international problem and an embarrassment for our profession. A BOF provides SIGCSE program advertising that will create a large audience for dissemination of information concerning successful gender issues projects and can provide time for discussion and brainstorming. Generally, the organizers divide the audience into a discussion subgroup and a dissemination section. We select discussion topics from our large listserv membership and offer short project presentations from representatives of ACM-W, NCWIT, ABI, CDC, CRA-W, etc. Last year, our listserv membership selected "assessment of Women-in-Computing projects" as the discussion topic. The forum provides an important annual meeting for a large group of people, who work to increase the representation of women in computing in their separate organizations and who do not customarily have an opportunity to share ideas face-to-face.