BCSWomen, the women’s group of British Chartered Institute for IT, was founded by Dr Sue Black in 1991, building great credibility around women in tech/computing. It won the inaugural GEM Tech award 2014 for supporting women in IT, under the leadership of then chair, Gillian Arnold. Sarah Burnett became chair of BCSWomen in 2017 and made a personal commitment to focus particularly on artificial intelligence (AI) and increase the number of women interested and working in this field. To do this she launched AI Accelerator, a program of free AI-focused webinars, seminars and workshops specifically targeted at women. Why? AI is a critical and urgently growing issue to ensure gender equality, a key issue in achieving the UN’s SDG5. Only 17% computing employees in the UK are women – it is believed that even fewer are in AI. Because men are programming AI in everything from recruitment to health, unconscious bias is creeping in and could lead to backward steps in gender equality. Sarah does not receive any additional funding for AI Accelerator from the BCS but runs it within the BCSWomen budget on a voluntary basis, with help from other volunteers such as the BCSWomen committee members and speakers who give their time or corporate facilities for free.

https://bcswomen.bcs.org

• United Kingdom

• Women

The project aims at increasing the number of women interested and working in the field of AI.