Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
A group of female computer professionals in Australia has struck sexy poses for a calendar to try to shake off their geeky image and encourage women to take up technology studies.
"The IT Screen Goddesses Calendar features beautiful photos of real women working in the IT industry, in poses inspired by movie goddesses old and recent," the group says on its website.
"We plan to smash through the geek perception by displaying a wide variety (jobs, age, nationality, roles and body shapes) of real women in IT fields."
"The method in the madness is to get to a broader audience so that people can see that it's not nerds in the IT industry," said organiser Sonja Bernhardt.
"They are full bodied, fully intelligent, fully socialised women who absolutely love what they do."
The calendar includes a picture of a woman in the famous pose of the bikini-clad Ursula Andress in the James Bond movie "Dr No" and another nude except for stratetgically-strewn rose petals, as in the film "American Beauty".
The models are from Australia, South Africa, Finland and Sri Lanka, ranging in age from 20 to 60 years.
"Each month includes a biography of the woman featured that month, as well as a significant date in technology history," Bernhardt said.
Profits from the sale of the calendar will be distributed among organisations promoting careers in IT for women and girls.
"Five years ago, women made up 25 per cent of the IT industry worldwide and now it's down to 16 per cent," Bernhardt said Sunday.
"Statistics show us that one of the biggest barriers to entry is the perception of the industry. We want to completely smash this by doing this in a parody way."
lb/lod
Australia-IT-offbeat
AFP 090811 GMT 07 06
COPYRIGHT 2004 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.
