Gender and computing: West and East Europe

During the Communist era, a number of countries in central and eastern Europe produced large numbers of female technologists at a time when many western countries were not doing so. Will this tendency survive the recent upheavals and the introduction of computer technology A sample of 227 Romanian students were compared with a similar sample of 136 Scottish students. They were presented with a questionnaire about use of and attitudes towards computing. Romanians reported far less experience of computers, but were far more positive about them than the Scots. It was of particular interest that this applied to females as much as to males. Parents of Romanian students were also fairly positive about computers. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.