The European commissioner for information society and media, Viviane Reding, has set her sights on debunking geeky IT stereotypes which she believes are putting women off working in technology.
By this time next year, Reding plans to establish a European code of best practice for women in IT - to address the so-called 'leaky pipeline' phenomenon, whereby girls steadily lose interest in working in technology as they progress through education and settle on a career.
Given that the first person to grasp the potential of automatic logic was a British woman, Ada, Countess Lovelace, and that the pioneers of high-level language programming were the US "sewing circle" which included Jean Sammet, and Grace Murray Hopper, it is a sad reflection on our times that this initiative is necessary.
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