Yet by the end of her second semester, she has decided to transfer to the English department. Her enthusiasm for computer science is extinguished. She says, "In high school, when I'd go home from class, I would be like ?Oh, let's program a little.? But, now I am just like, ?Let's not bother.?" Struggling with the course work, perceiving her peers (mostly male) as doing much better with much less effort, feeling a misfit between herself and a cultural norm that associates success with an all consuming love of computing, she questions whether she belongs in the department. Several semesters after leaving computer science, Lily describes her disappointment in having transferred out. It is not that she is unhappy in English. She loves the humanities. But she remembers how much she loved programming, had wanted to major in computer science, and feels dismayed with how her interest has been extinguished.

• Schools are to run computer clubs just for girls to try to encourage more young women to enter the IT profession.

• American women working in computing are launching a drive to change the image of their industry. At this week's Comdex trade show the Girl Geeks group, which aims to support women in the IT world, told a press conference that it was now "chic to be geek." The BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones reports.

• Of the UK's 10m+ Internet users, just under 39% are women - and that figure hasn't changed much in the past four years.

• Computers and the Internet must be marketed better if the gender gap in information technology is to close.

• The very fact that you are reading this article means you four times more likely to be a man than a woman.

• Pensioners in Japan are proving you are never too old to learn. A new generation of "computer grannies" have joined the cyber age.

• Information Technology has an image problem. Techies wear black T-shirts and chat online. They don't wear deodorant or talk to people. And they are men

• One highlight of the career of IBM's chief technologist has been far removed from the many awards the IT industry leader has won for its scientific breakthroughs. In fact it was the day two ten-year-old girls phoned to thank him for changing their lives after he visited their school and shared his enthusiasm for IT and electronic engineering.

• A profusion of initiatives have come and gone. Appropriate sounding targets have been set for distant dates, while networks, development programmes and old fashioned exhortation have all been tried. And still women are conspicuous by their absence from the boardrooms of the world.

• She wanted to marry Prince Charles but settled for being Queen of the Net. With 991 e-mails in her in-box.

• VIOLENT video games which teenage girls regard as "silly and immature" turn them off computers and affect their view of information technology for the rest of their lives, psychologists were told yesterday.

• It has sunshine, share options and a glut of technology businesses, but it doesn't have many women. Indeed, Silicon Valley is second only to Alaska with its ratio of men to women. Andy Goldberg tracks down the women who can cope in the man's world of America's high-tech capital

• Many women are disenchanted with careers in science and fewer girls are joining industry. But as Christine McGourty finds, moves are afoot to attract them

• The job description for programmers would seem to fit women perfectly, but look around the techies at any company and they are few and far between. Now the shortage is making employers adopt more female-friendly policies.

• Computer Science a guide to the degree program