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In Western Europe, research has indicated that males on average are often found to be more experienced in computing than are females, and to have more positive attitudes and self-efficacy (self-confidence) towards computing. Research has also shown that some East European countries have historically had relatively greater female involvement with technology, engineering, and computing than has Western Europe. It is an interesting question as to whether this greater involvement will continue into the new circumstances of Eastern Europe. 200 Romanian and 148 Scottish students completed a computer selfefficacy scale. Overall males were more confident than females in advanced software computer skills, but had similar confidence for beginning skills. Scots of both genders were more confident than their Romanian equivalents for beginning computer skills, whilst Romanians were more confident for advanced computer skills. The visibility of gender effects in both countries raises the possibility that the relatively greater female involvement in technology in East Europe may not continue. 1. 78E. Balka et al. (eds.), Women, Work and Computerization

This paper introduces a computer supported framework for co-ordinating distributed collaborative design where the players may be geographically and temporally dispersed, and mobile. The framework is based on a multi-agent architecture overlaying CORBA middleware, providing location and migration transparency and facilitating communication between mobile entities. The architecture has been validated by the implementation of a prototype in the configuration design domain, however, it is shown to have general applicability across computer supported design. The implementation process identified a problem of distributed conflict resolution. A deontic logic based formalism is described and we show how this could be incorporated in the framework to facilitate distributed conflict management. 1: IntroductionCo-ordinating the activities of a geographically dispersed design team, while ensuring that all team members have continuous access to design changes, is a complex process [2]. It is made more complex when the team members, and their software tools, are mobile. Architects, for example, may work both from a design studio and from a construction site using lap-top computers. This paper introduces an expert agent architecture built into a multi-agent framework which enables design decisions to be propagated throughout a design team while supporting artificial intelligence techniques such as critiquing, case based reasoning and machine learning.The paper identifies problems inherent in traditional design co-ordination models and presents a simplified view of the design process which facilitates the communication of design decisions. It then discusses the requirements of expert agents to support designers and how such agents can communicate to form a dynamic network. A framework is identified to provide the basis of a system implementing support for co-operative computer supported design in dynamic and mobile teams. The framework was prototyped in the configuration design domain but is applicable to the general computer supported design domain.The implementation is described and a key problem identified: detecting and facilitating distributed conflict resolution between agents. A deontic logic based formalism for conflict management is introduced and illustrated with an example of design conflict. The paper concludes with a comparison of this architecture with similar work. 1.1: Collaborative designAll but the simplest design projects are undertaken by a team of designers and other specialists. Each works on different parts of the design, and works from different perspectives, and towards different goals. Each must assess the impacts of their decisions on others, and notify affected parties timeously, effectively and appropriately.The traditional serial design model cannot effectively deal with these co-ordination issues: the participants may be dispersed, or temporarily unable to be contacted. New models, based on communicating expert agents, which support the work of human experts, have been, and are being, developed to ...