Closing the gender gap
While the statistics for women IT workers are bleak, they have spawned dozens of efforts to attract women to the field and encourage those already there.
One of the newest and most ambitious groups to emerge is the National Centre for Women and Information Technology, a nonprofit based at the University of Colorado at Boulder that received a four-year, $3.25 million grant last year from the National Science Foundation.
The group's goal is to increase the ranks of women in the US computing and IT work force from about 25 percent today to 50 percent over the next 20 years. It's already signed up an impressive roster of participants from more than 20 universities, a dozen high-tech companies and nonprofits such as the Girl Scouts.
Another focus is reforming college computer science programs to make them less about weeding out weak students and more about encouraging all comers to succeed.
Carnegie Mellon University has been something of trailblazer in this respect. In 1995, a paltry 7 percent of undergraduates enrolled in CMU's computer science school were women. Now, after instituting changes -- comparable to affirmative action sans quotas -- designed to attract women six years ago, women enrollment is closer to a third.
While still requiring high test scores, especially in mathematics, the school no longer puts as much weight on prior programming experience. Freshman accelerated-programming classes generally level the playing field by the student's sophomore year, said Lenore Blum, a CMU computer science professor.
"In the '90s, we selected for the geek personality," Blum said.
Gonzalez's alma mater, UCLA, is among the schools working to change the experience for computer science students. In the past several years, the California university has received grants from HP to revamp an introductory course in electrical engineering to make it less intimidating and more effective.
Students can now send questions to the professor during class via wireless instant messaging rather than having to raise their hand -- a strategy designed to aid shy students. The instructor can either discuss the question with the whole class or answer it privately later.
Recalling that she was one of four Latina women from Los Angeles public schools who dropped out of UCLA's computer science program, Gonzalez applauds the idea of programs that accommodate relative computer newbies. As a middle-school teacher, she encourages a new generation of potential women techies by focusing on the fundamentals of the field. "I definitely push math and science in my class," she said.
As reformers work to make the computer science field less guy-centric, hundreds of thousands of women continue to make their living and pursue their passions in IT. Here's a glimpse into the lives of three women in tech.
Intrepid entrepreneur: Stephanie DiMarco
Gender biases in the financial-services industry helped push Stephanie DiMarco to become a leader in the tech world.
With a fresh business degree from the University of California at Berkeley, DiMarco applied for a position as an investment analyst. "The seminal moment in my career was in a job interview, when a guy asked me how fast I can type," she recalled.
An indignant DiMarco decided that she could be her own boss, and in 1983, she co-founded Advent Software.
At the outset, DiMarco's vision was to use then-powerful IBM "XT" personal computers to give software tools to financial-services professionals. The company, which continues to focus on the financial-services industry, now employs about 800. Its chief technology officer, Lily Chang, is also a woman.
As a member of the small club of woman tech CEOs, DiMarco has had her share of slights. In the early days of Advent, she remembers, people often assumed she wasn't the one in charge when she appeared with a male colleague.
But DiMarco says the technology field is still fertile for female entrepreneurs: "The opportunity for innovation is always there."
Talkback
Well the woman who said monoculture is bad in IT was wrong. From 1978-1998 IT (at least desktop PCs) was a 95% white American male industry. And it was flying high then. Now that we have fragmented it, split it up, thrown in every other culture and race from the world, there has been no innovation in the past 7 years. Except for Apple - which is still a relatively white-male dominated company. There is a reason for that. It's not racism. There are just some things that some cultures are better at than others. Japanese and Germans are great at making cars. Swiss are great skiers. Bralizians are great soccer players. It's not racist or gender-biased to say so. The fact is *good* software (not just any software) is the sole realm of the white American male. People trying to force square pegs into round holes will not make it otherwise.
"Anonymous" of San Jose. WHat a posting. You expose yourself as a perfect racsist/assmuption driven discriminator. You obviously don't work for a company that runs "Valuing Diversity" courses. It is sad that your attitude is very typical of the one I have seen evidenced against females, again and again and again, in the UK, both in academia and in industry. Men do not handle the threat of a technically competent female very well at all. The upstart female has to be slapped down (metaphorically) and shown that technically incompetent, lack-lustre and non-productive men must always hold the positions of authority. Superior work turned in by a female will be stolen and the ensuing credit apportioned to non-functioning men also onthe team. Will it ever change? Well, I've been waiting for the last 10 years, and it hasn't yet.
You're both talking garbage.
The first post despite its denials is undoubtedly racist and sexist. And the second post is just as bad. "Women's work is stolen by men who then take the credit for it". Oh please! This anti-male rubbish is no different froom the anti-female rubbish of the first post.
What's wrong with the simple idea that men and women are different? Or that some professions attract more women, (infant teachers, midwifes, etc.) and that some jobs attract more men, (computing).
It's not absolute, it's not based on ability as both are equally able, it's just down to inclination.
There's nothing wrong with looking at how IT can be made more attractive to women - it might make it more attractive for men as well. Just as long as there's no discrimination involved. (There is nothing "positive" about discrimination).
What I read is a gross over-simplification. For instance, Germans are known deservedly as the greatest producer of music software. The fact that the original German companies who produced such great software as Logic Audio or Cubase have been bought by US, Japan or Singapore based companies does not diminish their merit. The same could be said of hundreds of good software products which haven't been created by Americans and which Americans use without knowing they are not American-made.
Scientific, Technical and related commerical fields have a rigor that often quickly exposes inadequate, 2nd rate or inappropriate (all be it good) solutions . Regardless of the gender or race of those contributing. I have often found technical females lacking, other companies solutions lacking and work from my colluges lacking. I have often found my own skills and abilities lacking in comparison to others. My experience is that 90% of people could'nt write adequate software with the current tools and 90 % of those writing software could do a better job but wont for one reason or another.
In technical fields we have to resist the temptation to put eachother on the scrapheap just because the goalposts have moved in terms of skillsets and in vogue technologies.
New ways of doing things and a different viewpoint are always needed but will mostly never make any money or even see the light of day regardless of who is innovating.
However commercial reality is that for lots of companies unless you deliver regardless of the difficulties you are of little use to that company and will start to feel the cold shoulder . Also whats wrong with realisng that you are in the wrong job !!! Better sooner than later. Square peg round hole?
Forgive the spelling - inadequate techie
I think its more to do with the loner/geek personality that has dominated IT. Sitting in your bedroom alone for hours learning to program or build your own pcs is unlikely to appeal to the young female. Computers are more likely viewd as a tool to be used not an end in themselves.
No doubt car mechanics and engineering suffer the same male bias as I.T.
For tech courses to work for females they are going to have to allow for those who are intellectually capable but lack the hands on experience.
In answer to Ian Lincoln, I think that's totally it! I am a female computer tech working in a job doing long distance techsupport either by phone or over the 'net for clients all over the US, Canada, Hawaii, Britain, India, and even a couple clients in Russia and Saudi Arabia. The company I work for has spared many people from having to unhook their pc to take it into a local shop for many reasons. AND, we're based in Canada, not some offshore location that can't speak English very well inspite of potentially having a very sharp technical understanding.
However, when I was taking my A+ practicum several years ago, another young lady came into the shop I was working in, having freshly completed her MCSE at a university in Nova Scotia, where she had little to no hands-on training, it was almost entirely theory. She spent two weeks with us before realizing she couldn't stand the job. I felt so sorry for her.
By personality, I think I'm a tomboy! "How does it work, why does it do that, what if I do this?" are questions I've always asked, and sought to answer, and that before becoming a tech, meant alot of calls to techsupport because of breaking things on the computer trying to answer those questions years ago.
I'm also a loner. Sitting in front of my computer doing webwork or fixing issues for other people can cause me to lose all track of time, and my kids have to remind me on occasion that its time to cook dinner, or that I forgot about their bedtime routine. Fortunately their old enough now to handle some of that for themselves.
But yes it does take a certain mindset to become a geek of any stripe, whether its programming, webdesign, techsupport, systems management, security management, whatever the job title might be. If I had more time, I would be brushing up my programming skills and going into programming contracts. But I don't have that time available.
If a woman has the right mindset, she'll go far in this industry.