This site has been created to log references to women in technology. If you have any suggested additions, please contact me. From ACM's TechNews, October 21, 2005 "K-12 Programs Draw Girls to Science" EE Times (10/17/05) No. 1393, P. 1; Riley, Sheila To help overcome the proportionate absence of girls in engineering, MathWorks is sponsoring an after-school robotics club for fifth grader girls where, in teams of three, they design a robotic device to improve handicapped access. That the environment is all female helps the children feel like they are not in competition with boys, and the project is also appealing because it makes them feel like they are helping others. The program is just one of many throughout primary and secondary education around the country aimed at boosting the participation of underrepresented demographic groups in math and science. At the forefront of such initiatives is the nonprofit Project Lead the Way (PLTW), which develops pre-engineering courses for middle schools and high schools. PLTW strives to offer a rigorous primer that is often a better predictor of a student's success in a college engineering program than grades and SAT scores. PLTW courses are taught by trained instructors in 45 states and the District of Columbia, spanning fields such as digital electronics, civil engineering, and computer-related manufacturing, with enrollments of more than 250,000 students. To address the gender disparity, PLTW has developed brochures marketing the classes specifically to girls that are distributed to parent-teachers associations at schools considering adopting the program, in the hopes of seeing a female enrollment of 40 percent, double the current portion of professional engineers. The programs seek to build girls' confidence and expose them to female role models. The issue has attracted corporate attention, as well, as a group of senior women from Texas Instruments has formed the Women of TI Fund, which supports programs promoting engineering to women and has established the Gender Parity Initiative, which trains educators about how their teaching techniques affect girls. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, October 14, 2005 "A Female Sensibility" Newsweek (10/03/05) Vol. 146, No. 16, P. E20; Dickey, Christopher; Summers, Nick The free download Facade is the latest effort by videogame designers to turn large numbers of women into gaming consumers. Created by Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas, Facade offers more complex characters and plots than the typical videogame of fight if kicked. Facade is "like standing on a stage with two improvisational actors" in a drama, according to Stern, as a couple, Trip and Grace, argue over their unraveling marriage. The player enters the room and they deny anything is wrong, before trying to get the player to take sides, and it is up to the player to decide whether to help the couple, provoke the situation, or even flirt with Trip or Grace. Players do not win or lose, but rather the point is to get them intensely involved in the game, which has attracted approximately 150,000 downloads since July, and at least half, perhaps more, have been by women. Broadband Internet access and artificial intelligence have enabled videogame makers to take characters and plots to the next level, and designers believe this will make games more appealing to women. The gaming industry is trying to capitalize on the interest women displayed for Sims games, in which players were able to create a whole world based on their need for money, food, shelter, and love; and multiplayer online games, in which players can inhabit characters, including nurturers, in a fantasy environment of swords and sorcery. "Female gaming is the last frontier; 2006 is going to be a milestone year," predicts GamesSpot.com director Ankarino Lara. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, October 5, 2005 "E-Voting Experts Call for Revised Security Guidelines" Security Focus (10/03/05); Lemos, Robert The National Science Foundation-funded A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable, and Transparent Elections (ACCURATE) saved its suggested reforms to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission's recommended process for assessing electronic voting system security for the last day of the public comment period on EAC's Voluntary Voting System Guidelines. The center's researchers stated that security is not built into the design of current voting systems, while current testing procedures ignore security in favor of functionality. ACCURATE director and Johns Hopkins University computer science professor Avi Rubin criticized e-voting machines for their lack of public testing and increasing incomprehensibility to average voters. The ACCURATE researchers have recommended the establishment of public and transparent procedures for testing and certifying e-voting systems, and the collection of data on Election Day to ensure better system evaluation. Many system vendors have balked, asserting that such measures would threaten their intellectual property or permit reckless claims against their products to be made. Some technologists believe complete transparency should be incorporated into e-voting systems by basing them on open-source software, and a template for such a system is being developed with funding from the Open Voting Consortium. Rubin said open source software will not solve all problems associated with e-voting system security, noting that the code would require intense auditing and careful maintenance. In addition, he warned that the inclusion of any proprietary software in the system would endanger the system's overall security. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, October 5, 2005 "Female Equation" Washington Times (10/03/05) P. B1; Widhalm, Shelley There are fewer women professionals in the math and computer science fields because fewer female college and university students are pursuing studies in those areas. Jill Landsman, with the Technology Student Association in Virginia, attributes this downward trend to a lack of female role models. Mary Jean Harrold, with the National Science Foundation's Advance program, says girls taking computer science classes may perceive a computer science career as socially isolating and personally unrewarding. National Alliance for Partnership Equity executive director Mimi Lufkin thinks such views are nurtured by the competitive environment of computer science classes and their emphasis on theory and individual performance rather than practical application and teamwork, while additional discouragement can come from the media and parents. Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology CEO Telle Whitney says, "What women often express is that they do feel alone. They look around and don't see people who look like them." Colleges in the Washington, D.C., metro area are attempting to provide female role models for students: Sanjay Rai, dean of Montgomery College's science, engineering, and mathematics department, says more than half of his department's personnel are women. American University recruits female faculty members to encourage higher enrollments of female students in its math department, according to AU professor Mary Gray. In addition, the AU math department encourages students to socialize with faculty members or each other through special events. Click Here to View Full Article "Emotional Intelligence May Be Good Predictor of Success in Computing Studies" EurekAlert (10/04/05) The emotional intelligence of students plays an indirect role in how well they excel in information technology studies, according to a study by researchers at Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business. The study involved the participation of more than 600 undergraduates, both minorities and non-minorities, at over 40 U.S. institutions. The experiment evaluated how well students in computer science and information systems functioned under stress and how their grades reflected their levels of emotional intelligence, described as "the ability to perceive, assess, and positively influence personal and others' emotions." Research team member France Belanger says coping tactics and emotional intelligence were measured to determine whether something greater than innate intelligence is needed to tackle the challenges of rigorous curricula, and the researchers concluded that students with higher emotional intelligence levels were more self-confident and aware that they could effectively cope with any problems, which subsequently fed into their enhanced academic performance. "One of the implications of these findings is that computing curricula might need to be redesigned to include emotional intelligence training, which is a learnable skill," notes Belanger. The study is part of a three-year, National Science Foundation-funded project exploring how intrapersonal as well as interpersonal variables play into the recruitment and retention of students in IT studies, with particular emphasis on minorities. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, September 28, 2005 "EE Schools: Where Are the Girls?" EE Times (09/26/05); Riley, Sheila Girls are being discouraged from pursuing degrees in engineering by a variety of factors, including a negative image of the engineering profession, a lack of role models, little support from peers or parents, sexist attitudes, and classes and workplaces that are predominantly male. Nathan Bell with the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology estimates that female engineers accounted for 10.4 percent of the 2003 workforce overall, and just 7.2 percent of the 2003 electrical and electronics engineering workforce. He reports little progress in boosting those percentages over the last decade, while the Engineering Workforce Commission's Dan Bateson says the number of men earning engineering degrees is more than five times that of women. Stereotypical perceptions of engineers will continue to prevail until the number of women studying engineering and finding employment as engineers increases significantly. The Stevens Institute of Technology's Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education's Susan Metz says ability plays no part in girls' avoidance of engineering, while National Instruments' Tamra Kerns notes that many girls are discouraged from continuing their education by their mothers, who claim that they are destined to be homemakers and parents. American Association of University Women research director Elena Silva reports an increase in the number of women earning engineering degrees every year for the last 30 years. Still, a principally male educational and professional environment remains a major source of discouragement for potential female engineers. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, September 21, 2005 "Closing the Gender Gap" Computer Weekly (09/20/05); Hall, Wendy University of Southampton computer science professor Wendy Hall cites a British Computer Society (BCS) survey of U.K. schoolgirls concluding that girls' interest in computing and IT is being discouraged by their perception of IT careers as tedious and unrewarding, indicating the failure of career advisors and the IT profession to communicate to girls that IT careers are more exciting, diverse, and fulfilling than they think. Gender bias and a lack of female role models are significant factors in women's lack of enthusiasm toward technology careers. Hall says women are now thought to account for approximately 20 percent of the total workforce, while a mere 17 percent of U.K. computer science degree entrants are female, most of them from overseas. She says the BCS is taking an active role in improving these numbers by hosting a women's group and recognizing organizations that encourage women to pursue tech careers by including a Women in IT Award in its BCS IT Professional Awards; on the horizon is a women's forum that will probe the gender gap and advise business and government on how this divide can be closed. Hall raises the need for more organizations such as Women Into IT and the Women in IT Forum, and says career advisors should tell girls that companies are very flexible when it comes to rearranging work schedules and accommodating families. Hall is generally positive that the gender imbalance in IT will be corrected as IT's role becomes more interdisciplinary and wider-ranging. She predicts that "once girls start seeing...how IT is an increasingly fundamental part of the more 'glamorous' professions, we will see a turnaround." From ACM's TechNews, September 9, 2005 "Women Are 'Put Off' Hi-Tech Jobs" BBC News (09/08/05) An Intellect report finds that the British technology industry must make a better effort to recruit, persuade, and retain women in the high-tech work force, which is characterized by a bias toward males and a lack of female role models. The Office of National Statistics estimates that the percentage of women in technology industries declined from 27% to 21% between 1997 and 2005, while the British Computer Society reports that 28% of U.K. organizations do not employ female technologists. The Intellect report attributes the defection of women from the IT industry to long hours, a dearth of networking opportunities, and their perception of IT as a boys' club. The Department of Trade and Industry said it would be seeking to provide more role models for women through its work with various organizations. Meanwhile, the U.K. Resource Center for Women in SET (science, engineering, and technology) seeks to encourage more women to pursue SET careers as well as put 40% of women on industry and academic boards in a few years through collaboration with SET experts and employers to provide support, information, training, and mentoring programs. In addition, the Athena Project and the Scientific Women's Academic Network hopes to curb the loss of female researchers through a six-point charter to help address gender bias in British universities. Click Here to View Full Article "Women in IT: How Are We Doing?" rabble.ca (09/02/05); Scott-Dixon, Krista In her book, "Doing IT: Women Working in Information Technology," Krista Scott-Dixon describes IT as a blend of both positive and negative that is alternately stifling, liberating, limiting, and vitalizing for women. "The mundane minutiae of people's daily experiences with information technologies have smoothed the cutting edge of the 'information revolution,'" she explains. "At the same time, the banality of these technologies can conceal their potential to enable dramatic changes in work practices." Scott-Dixon reports that women in IT remain a minority, generally earn less and do more uncompensated work than their male counterparts, and are still confronted with both subtle and obvious discrimination along racial, sexual, social, and age-related lines. Few women enroll in technical fields in universities, and those who do soon drop out; most women end up in IT by accident rather than by choice. But Scott-Dixon refuses to rationalize the lack of female IT workers with pat explanations such as an innate dislike of technology, natural disinterest in the field, or cognitive limitations. She illustrates her point by noting that many women she has spoken to regard IT as a stimulating and empowering field, and this observation is backed up by a Statistics Canada survey in which more than 50% of respondents said their work has become more interesting since technology was introduced. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, September 7, 2005 "Pushing Girls Toward Science" Edwardsville Intelligencer (IL) (09/05/05); Malone, Zhanda A report from the National Science Foundation estimates that in 2001, 35% of the students enrolled in undergraduate physics, computer science, and math classes and 16% of those enrolled in undergraduate engineering classes were female. Meanwhile, women comprised less than 10% of students enrolled in graduate physics and engineering classes. A team of researchers at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) recently received a $360,000 grant designed to boost the participation of women in engineering and the sciences through efforts such as a high school robotics competition coordinated by professor Jerry Weinberg with the SIUE School of Engineering's Computer Science faculty. The professor says the program starts with teams of six to 10 students who will use robot kits to design, construct, and program a group of small mobile devices. "Participants will learn to comprehend how the tools of math and science are used in creative projects, and to learn about their application in the everyday world," Weinberg says. Weinberg says the participants will be studied in detail to acquire a better understanding of how such programs influence the way girls perceive their skill in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). In addition, Weinberg says the study will hopefully reveal how this perception affects girls' long-term study and career tracks. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, August 26, 2005 "Computer Character Lia Schools Girls in Tech" Investor's Business Daily (08/26/05) P. A4; Riley, Sheila Efforts are underway to counter young girls' disinterest in science and technology, which tends to take root around middle school. One such effort is Lia, a virtual Hispanic teenager designed to be a role model for girls as well as minorities. Leigh Hallisey with Boston University's Photonics Center, which developed Lia with the FableVision children's media company, says Lia is Hispanic to address a lack of positive media portrayals of Hispanic females and to appeal to the fastest-growing demographic in the United States, which is also the most underrepresented segment of the high-tech workforce. Lia will make her debut appearance on the National Academy of Science's iwaswondering.org Web site next month, where she will assume the persona of an agent for a secret organization that is trying to save the planet. Another initiative to get more girls interested in high tech is a student-directed UCLA outreach program that stresses the "coolness" of engineering to middle and high school students. Middle school age is when peer pressure and other factors cause girls to start viewing computing as a geeky boys' club, according to Marla Ozarowski of Girls in Technology. Although the number of women earning college degrees in science and engineering has risen every year for the past three decades, women currently account for only 20 percent of engineering students, 30 percent of computer science students, and 36 percent of math students in graduate programs, says Elena Silva with the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation. From ACM's TechNews, August 22, 2005 "Enhanced: More Women in Science" Science (08/19/05) Vol. 309, No. 5738, P. 1190; Handelsman, Jo; Cantor, Nancy; Carnes, Molly In the 25 years since the inception of the Women in Science and Technology Act, women have made significant advances into the fields of math and science, though their participation remains disproportionately low in academia. Despite the recent debate over innate intelligence and cognitive ability, there is no evidence arguing toward women's inability to succeed in technical fields, as the skills required of a scientist are diverse, and it is generally recognized that the scientific community is enriched by a diversity of perspectives. Cultural factors seem more influential, as the 30-fold increase in the proportion of engineering Ph.D.s awarded to women between 1970 and 2003 points to an adjustment of cultural norms, rather than a shift in innate ability. The absence of female role models, a lack of encouragement in school, and compromised self-confidence impede women's enrollment in scientific courses of study and their inclusion in university faculties. Advisors and female professors can help women overcome the psychological barriers deterring them from pursuing careers in higher education by steering their course of study and acting as positive role models. Women also cite an unwelcoming campus climate, which can range from unintended derision to outright sexual harassment, as a factor contributing to their abandonment of the academy. It has also been shown that women suffer from unconscious bias, as evaluators are more critical of their subject once they learn that she is female, suggesting the need for concealing an applicant's gender. The disproportionate amount of time women spend caring for their families also curtails the pursuit of careers in higher education, though publicizing stories of women who have successfully balanced careers and family, as well as more family-friendly facilities on campus, would help to overcome this obstacle. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, August 19, 2005 "Despite Gains, Women Still Face Bias in Science Careers" UW-Madison (08/18/05); Devitt, Terry A group of eminent women researchers and administrators present the case that most women scientists at universities must still contend with bias, a lack of respect, and even outright hostility in the Aug. 19 issue of Science. University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and group leader Jo Handelsman says most of the hostility is subtle and insidious. The analysis indicates that women seeking tenured faculty positions and advancement opportunities face a number of challenges, including a "chilly" campus atmosphere that many men do not perceive; unconscious discrimination; disproportionate family obligations; and fewer women being trained to the Ph.D. level in engineering and physical sciences. Alice Hogan, director of the National Science Foundation's ADVANCE Program, reports that these issues often hurt women's chances of advancing in their science careers. "While we as a nation have made considerable progress in attracting women into most science and engineering fields, we still see fewer women at the full professor and academic leadership levels than we would expect given the pool of women with doctorates," she explains. Handelsman reports that the gender bias issue is finally starting to come to light, which is a positive step. She also notes that people and institutions can address the issue through various strategies: She cites UW-Madison's Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute, which has set up workshops to teach solid search techniques to faculty search committees, as well as make committee members more cognizant of hidden bias. Georgia Tech, meanwhile, has launched a Web-based effort to make gender-, race-, and ethnicity-related biases understandable to deans, department chairs, and tenure and promotion committee members. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, August 15, 2005 "Fewer Women Find Their Way Into Tech" Denver Business Journal (08/14/05); Mook, Bob With the number of women venturing into technology careers at its lowest point since the 1970s, nonprofits such as the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) at the University of Colorado's Boulder campus are endeavoring to find out why. A recent survey found that one quarter of 1 percent of incoming female college freshman list computer science as a probable major, down from the mid 1980s mark of 4.25 percent. Girls are frequently dismissive of math and science at the secondary school level, as only 15 percent of the students who took the science Advanced Placement exam in 2004 were female, while girls accounted for 55 percent of the overall number of students who took AP tests. The dot-com collapse has eroded general interest in technology, though IT suffers from an image problem that specifically deters women from pursuing it as a career, said NCWIT CEO Lucy Sanders. Despite the Bureau of Labor Statistics' estimate that 1.5 million IT jobs will be created by 2012, many young people are discouraged by concerns over the emerging trend of offshoring tech jobs. Sanders is concerned that the exclusion of women from the IT sector will undermine the healthy collaboration between genders that often generates the best results; rather than a gender-specific high school curriculum, Sanders advocates an effort by educators to overhaul the image of technology to make it more appealing to girls by debunking the myth of the isolated programmer alone in a cubicle for eight hours a day and emphasizing the broad relevance of IT in a diversity of fields. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, August 10, 2005 "Panel: Open-Source Needs More Women Developers" Computerworld (08/08/05); Weiss, Todd R. A panel discussion at the seventh annual O'Reilly Open Source Convention last week focused on the severe underrepresentation of women in open-source projects. Panelists cited academic and private studies estimating that only about 2 percent of open-source software developers are female, compared to around 25 percent of proprietary software developers. Among the obstacles facing women in open-source development is chauvinistic male developers and the presence of an "old boys network" that discourages participation, according to panel members. Open Source Institute board member Danese Cooper said the establishment of women-focused groups in some open-source communities is one idea under consideration. Mozilla Foundation President Mitchell Baker noted that family obligations can limit the amount of time female developers spend on open-source projects, while panelist Zaheda Bhorat of Google concurred that open-source development requires a significant investment in time. Sun Microsystems' Claire Giordano reported that women can encourage other women to participate in open-source projects. Meanwhile, Perl Foundation President Allison Randal stressed the importance of being hardworking and assertive, and not worrying over how male developers might react. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, August 5, 2005 "IT Jobs Call Stateside, But Who's Answering?" Seattle Times (08/04/05); Large, Jerry University of Washington computer-science program director David Notkin, who recently joined the board of the Computer Research Association, suggests that IT jobs are more plentiful now than they were prior to the dot-com boom--at least for people with design and other higher-level computing skills. The surge in competition means that possessing just average computing skills is no longer enough to guarantee a job, according to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Notkin says the false assumption that IT jobs are scarce since the Internet bubble's implosion is partly responsible for a decline in the number of students studying computer science. He is attempting to encourage more people to pursue computer science by courting female and minority students, an effort complicated by persistent stereotypes of IT workers as socially maladjusted Caucasian males working in an isolating environment. Notkin says person-to-person interaction is an important element of programming, which means good social skills are a must. Computing is also a challenging and meaningful area of study that is applied to nearly every field. UW students, for example, are developing programs to assist people who suffer from Alzheimer's. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, July 29, 2005 "Not Playing to Women" Associated Press (07/22/05); Sandoval, Greg The video game industry needs more female programmers if it wants to expand its appeal beyond its core audience of men; IDC analyst Schelley Olhava says 70 percent of console game players are male, but female players could comprise a lucrative market--if their views were considered by the gaming industry. "There's no question that we need more diversity," says International Game Developers Association executive director Jason Della Rocca. "We're saying that we need to grow the business and broaden the audience, and yet the game creators are still mostly young, white males." This dominant male presence has helped cultivate a perception that the industry is primarily interested in violent action games where female characters are usually voluptuous sexpots, and this is discouraging for female game designers and programmers, according to insiders. Midway Home Entertainment software engineer and MIT graduate Tammy Yap says the marketing campaigns of software companies appear to reflect this attitude, as demonstrated by the scantily clad vixens adorning the covers of game magazines. Women in the gaming industry must also frequently contend with the loneliness of being in a boy's club. Anthony Borquez of the University of Southern California's Integrated Media Systems Center notes that there are typically no female students in the school of engineering's video game programming classes, while Great Britain's University of Derby's new game programming course attracted 106 applicants, but all were male. However, an Electronics Arts-sponsored summer programming camp at USC for female high school students attracted eight students; last year none applied. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, July 20, 2005 "Organizations Need New Ways to Retain Women in the IT Workplace" Penn State Live (07/18/05); DuBois, Charles IT companies need to do a better job of retaining women, concludes a recent study by researchers at Penn State University. Particularly important is extending flexibility to women as they bear and raise children, which could include part-time shifts, telecommuting, and child-care subsidies. The study represents a departure from previous research that focused on entry barriers for women in IT, as it demonstrates that "it doesn't get any easier for women even after they have their feet in the door," said Mark Wardell, associate professor of labor studies and sociology. The study, funded by the Computer and Information Systems Engineering Division of the National Science Foundation, found that women are 2.5 times more likely to leave IT jobs than men, and that they earn $15,000 less on average. Women are also more inclined to opt for jobs with high-quality health benefits and for organizations four times larger than those that attract men. On average, men were found to work two hours more per week, which fails to account for the average wage disparity or the gap in peak wages; the highest paid woman in the survey reported an income of $539,000, while the top man earns $900,000. In the 14 years after college, roughly 14 percent of men dropped out of the IT field, compared to 33.6 percent of women. The study also found that in the dynamic and continuously evolving IT arena, very few respondents reported participation in post-collegiate certification programs or seminars. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, July 18, 2005 "Getting More Girls to Study Math, Tech" San Francisco Chronicle (07/18/05) P. E1; Fost, Dan A July 19 panel discussion on "Women and Girls in Science, Math, and Technology" in Alameda, Calif., will address the wide gap between the percentages of men and women in science, engineering, and technology, which panelist Donna Milgram with the National Institute for Women in Trades, Technology, and Science attributes to "a tendency to define certain things as masculine and feminine." Kristin Butler with Girls Inc., the event's host, says her organization is dedicated to providing girls with opportunities to learn at their own rate of speed without being affected by stereotypes; she says the lack of boys at Girls Inc.'s computer lab removes the feeling of competition typical of school settings. Milgram, whose institute develops curriculum to enhance math's appeal to girls, says it is a challenge to overcome habitual views of mathematics that take root in early childhood, and recommends that girls should be allowed to play with chemistry sets and Legos in order to build problem-solving skills and spatial relationships. Milgram says robotics education also suffers from gender bias, in that it typically supports a male-oriented curriculum that emphasizes competition where the robots are frequently monsters. Other panelists will include computer science professor and Google software engineer Ellen Spertus. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, June 27, 2005 "Building Strength in Computer Science" AAAS (06/24/05); Lempinen, Edward In order to keep the U.S. technology workforce strong, computer science needs to be marketed to students in such a way as to claim back its eroding popularity and the exclusionary trend that has kept women and minorities out of computer-related fields must be reversed, concludes a new study from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and funded partially by the National Science Foundation. These "non-traditional" students, many of whom are older and have families, often face discrimination in the academic world, as insensitive instructors and a skewed financial aid system hold them back while white males retain the predominant position in the field. Computer science as a whole, though, has suffered a 60 percent decline in interest in the four years since 2000, according to a recent study by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. Schools such as DeVry Institute of Technology and Strayer University have emerged as an alternative to conventional colleges, boasting the most computer science bachelor's degrees in 2001. The alarming contrast between IT's growing importance and declining interest, particularly among women and minorities, has industry experts scrambling for solutions. The report cites greater faculty diversity, expanded investment in schools that cater to non-traditional students, and increased financial aid. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, June 24, 2005 "Is IT Unfriendly to Women?" TechRepublic (06/21/05); Armstrong, Judy Women, comprising 20 percent of the IT labor force but more than 50 percent of the overall workforce, face significant barriers from the IT industry. The Department of Labor Women's Bureau reports that women earn just 9 percent of the bachelor's degrees related to engineering and fewer than 28 percent of those awarded for computer science, down 37 percent in the last 20 years. Especially rare are women at the CIO and executive levels. Many women are deterred from pursuing IT careers because the time commitment often comes at the expense of their family, and a recent survey found that more than half of the women in IT are working more hours than they had expected. The general absence of women deprives the field of the distinct approach they take to problem-solving and the compassion they bring as managers, as well as simply reducing the overall supply of talent. As children, girls often do not receive the same focus from educators about computers, and many commercial products, such as computer games, are marketed to boys. Adopting the traditionally male approach to networking in the name of advancement would help the woman's cause, as would the industry's adoption of more flexible scheduling and telecommuting to help women with family commitments. Women also must rise to the challenges of IT, confidently pursuing those projects that no one else wants to tackle to stand out and further their careers. Many female CIOs and executives are met with resistance from their staff simply because they are women, but the best defense against such discrimination is to keep an even keel and concentrate on building relationships and not overcompensating to prove one's competence. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, June 22, 2005 "Women's Share of IT Jobs Plunges" Mercury News (06/22/05); Wong, Nicole A new report from the Information Technology Association of America shows a severe decline in the percentage of women in the IT workforce. Women held just 32.4 percent of IT jobs in 2004, a proportion that represents a 41 percent drop since 1996. The report also highlights a disproportionately low number of African-Americans and Latinos in IT positions. The report raises broad concerns over the future of the talent pool in an industry of declining interest to students that will see a large swath of its labor force retire with the baby boomers. A variety of factors have undercut women's involvement in IT, including a decline in the flexible work schedules that were so widely offered during the dot-com boom, as well as the deep cuts sustained in the data-entry and administrative sectors of IT in which women typically hold the majority of jobs. The portion of African Americans in the IT arena during the same eight-year period dropped from 9.1 percent to 8.3 percent. While the percentage of Latinos in IT rose slightly, it is still just 6.4 percent, just less than half of their role in the rest of the workforce. Amid evidence that the IT workforce is aging, the industry is also witnessing a pattern of foreign-born workers leaving the United States to head up tech companies in their own countries. The report suggests renewed corporate dedication to diversity, refocusing on minority recruitment, and working more closely with colleges to reach young talent. Click Here to View Full Article "Gadget Firms Start to Notice the Gals" Contra Costa Times (CA) (06/19/05); Lee, Ellen Consumer electronics companies are starting to recognize women as an under-appreciated audience in the packaging of their products. The Consumer Electronics Association reports that in the $100 billion per year industry, women are involved in 89% of the purchase decisions, and retailers and developers are starting to notice. In a traditionally male-dominated marketplace, women's substantial demand for gadgets that fit their needs has spurred shifts in marketing and design, such as CarryCell, which sells a line of clothing incorporating the ability to carry a cell phone into each of its fashions. The feminine shift in technology is widespread, as vibrant colors have partially supplanted the traditional black and silver design of consumer electronics. Many companies see the inherent limitations in that sort of cosmetic marketing, however, and are looking to present their products to female consumers in a way that highlights the item's daily relevance, as opposed to the more male-oriented method that trumpets the product's cutting-edge innovation on a very technical level. "We heard loud and clear from our female customers," says palmOne's Rose Rodd about her company's female-driven market research that led them to create the Zire handheld, built to be stylish, lightweight, and easy to use, and netted more than half of its sales from women. Busy professional women with families respond to gadgets that demonstrate the potential to simplify their lives, and they are being increasingly targeted in women's magazines such as Redbook and Real Simple. Companies such as Sony and Best Buy are also seeing the increased value in the female customer, and are revising their retail space as a result, offering wide aisles to accommodate strollers, and displaying graphics depicting the warm, unifying effect of technology on the family. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, June 15, 2005 "Making IT Women-Friendly" Baltimore Sun (06/14/05) P. 1C; Patalon, William III Over 250 women from over 20 nations have descended in Baltimore, Md., this week to attend a symposium put together by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County's Center for Women and Information Technology. The symposium's goal is to establish a five-year initiative to help women across the globe obtain greater access to, and leadership in, information technology, in both the business world and the public policy sector. Claudia Morrell, director of the center, says, "We're looking at achieving some very concrete actions." The symposium working group would like to have a leading presence at the World Summit on Information Society, set for November in Tunis. A recent study revealed that enrollment of women in computer science between 1998 and last year declined by 80 percent, versus a 32 percent decrease for men and women combined. Although the dot-com disintegration explains part of the drop, researchers think the numbers underscore the frustration women feel about cultures that are frequently less than open to women in technical sectors. In the coming decade, women will comprise most of the new entrants into the domestic workforce, the National Science Foundation reports. Click Here to View Full Article "Scheme Promoting IT Jobs to Girls" BBC News (06/14/05) The South East England Development Agency is funding a program that seeks to encourage girls to pursue IT-related careers. The Computer Club for Girls (CC4G) is a government initiative designed to educate school girls that IT jobs are not exclusively for boys. The program is being introduced to 3,600 schools across England, but will also be taught in community centers and other venues. Participants will be able to engage in a variety of computer-based activities, including mixing music and creating a fashion show. The agency hopes the program, which will target 150,000 girls age 10 to 14, will cause them to view IT-related fields with a different mindset. Currently, women comprise just 20 percent of the technology workforce. CC4G's Ruth Kelly says, "It is absolutely vital that we take every opportunity to help girls recognize the relevance and attractiveness of careers in science and technology." Agency head Pam Alexander says the next challenge is to extend the program from "14-years onward." Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, June 10, 2005 "Shattering Myths That Women Can't Be Leaders in Science" Spelman College (05/27/05) Spelman College's all-woman SpelBot team will be one of five American teams competing in the RoboCup 2005 tournament in Osaka next month, and its successful qualification is regarded as proof that leadership in the sciences is not dictated by gender. Spelman President Beverly Tatum says the SpelBots' triumph illustrates the need for "environments [like Spelman] where those who have been historically left out are expected to succeed without the barriers often associated with gender or race, particularly in science and technology." The SpelBots made the cut for the Osaka tournament with their performance in the third annual RoboCup U.S. Open in May; the team, under the leadership of computer science professor Andrew Williams, prepared for the tournaments by writing sophisticated computer software programs that enable Sony AIBO ERS-7 robot dogs to play soccer as well as formulate their own game strategy without remote control. Spelman's AIBO soccer team will square off against other AIBO soccer teams in the RoboCup tournament as part of a larger effort to develop robots that can autonomously assist humans in both simple and complicated tasks. Spelman is the only historically African-American, all-women's, and undergraduate institution to qualify for RoboCup 2005. Williams, an expert in bioinformatics and artificial intelligence, calls this a major triumph. "In the short term, with SpelBots we want to provide role models for other young ladies, and...show them computer science and engineering can be fun, and they can do it because they are just as talented, gifted and smart," he says. Click Here to View Full Article "Fostering Diversity and Inclusion for Europe's IT Sector" IST Results (06/09/05) A recent Information Society Technologies project in Europe studied the factors that keep immigrants, women, and other marginalized groups from joining the science, engineering, and technology sectors. The research is expected to lead to new policy changes and integration efforts on the part of the European Commission. National Institute for Working Life lead researcher Jonathan Feldman said minority groups are key to Europe's economic future, especially as the overall population ages and the IT sector faces a skills shortage; but governments need to adopt the right policies so that social inclusion translates into private-sector innovation. Researchers specifically looked at science parks in Stockholm, Linkoping, and Cambridge, as well as the media and multimedia strongholds of Rome and Cardiff in Wales. The study found minority groups could play an important role in shaping technology; people with physical disabilities could help design more accessible systems, for example. Meanwhile, special mentoring and cultural exposure programs can introduce science and technology into students' and workers' lives, while technology pilot projects should involve public agencies, hospitals, universities, and other open institutions so that the needs of key groups can be met while they gain skills. Government and corporate family-leave policies also discourage participation of women and immigrants in IT sector jobs, and a lack of capital for minority-run ventures is also a problem. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, June 3, 2005 "Women in Computing" Red Herring (06/06/05) In order to increase the number of women entering computer science, more female role models and mentors are needed to up their numbers and gain a beachhead in what is traditionally a male-dominated environment, according to experts. The numbers paint a picture of an increasingly difficult environment for women as they climb the corporate ladder: Though roughly 45 percent of the U.S. professional and business services workforce is female, only 9.3 percent of board members for U.S. technology companies are women, for example; at lower levels, women comprise 10.4 percent of computer hardware engineers, 7.1 percent of electrical and electronics engineers, and 30 percent of computer and information systems managers. Google consumer Web products director and Stanford computer science graduate Marissa Mayer says her job search after graduation shocked her with the absence of women in engineering groups--oftentimes, she would have been the only woman on the team. The Association for Women in Science President-elect Donna Dean says more female role models are needed in the tech sector to encourage younger women to enter the field. Anita Borg Institute President Telle Whitney goes further, saying women need to set new precedents by designing successful new technology. Whitney has more than two decades' experience in semiconductors and telecommunications, and says women in technology currently face male-oriented workforce dynamics that favor competition over cooperation, for example. Numenta CEO Donna Dubinsky, who led Palm Computing and Handspring, says being female never significantly hindered her career because the business environment was so intense that gender simply was not an issue. New technology applications such as blogging and Web-based business could end up making room for and empowering more women. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, May 20, 2005 "Beyond the Barriers: What Women Want in IT" Builder AU (05/20/05); Morton, Ella The Australian government has failed to increase the number of women in the IT field because it focused on barriers to recruitment instead of the qualities of the IT industry that are off-putting for women, says Australian Computer Society (ACS) Women board program director Su Spencer. The Australian government warned about low percentages of women in IT in a March 2000 report, but little progress has been made in the meantime; the Australian Bureau of Statistics says about 20 percent of the Australian IT workforce is female, and Spencer says the failure to increase the proportion of women in the workforce means it is time to re-think strategies and assumptions. The biggest needs are for women IT workers to set role models for others to follow, and for employers to craft new workforce policies that take family considerations into account. Technology can also play a role in creating a more hospitable work environment, such as by enabling telecommuting or opportunities in open source development, where contributors interact without regard to gender, race, or age. Although stereotypes of "geek isolation" remain an obstacle to more women entering the IT workforce, once people enter the industry they discover there are many avenues IT experts can take. Not every IT job deals with technical complexities: User-interface design, IT marketing, and business analysis are all outside the traditional stereotype of a software programmer. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, April 27, 2005 "Closing the Gender Gap" Fort Worth Star-Telegram (04/24/05); Cromer, Katherine With a $12,000 grant from Texas Instruments and the Dallas Women's Foundation, the University of Texas at Arlington has developed the Metroplex Area Gender Equity Institute with the goal of boosting the number of girls pursuing math and science careers. Attaining this goal requires reforming the teaching habits of middle school educators, which set up a gender inequity in the classroom that can discourage female students' interest in math and science. Teachers convene at the institute to work out strategies for giving both genders equal representation in the classroom and to share technology and other resources to help maintain girls' interest. Cultural expectations often dampen girls' ambitions for math and science careers: Whereas boys are taught to be independent and aggressive at an early age, girls are more often sheltered by parents and educators. Director of Texas Woman's University's Science and Mathematics Center Cathy Banks says attracting girls to science and math in middle school and retaining them through high school is critical, and adds that cultural gender bias toward males can have a negative effect on the economy and the business world, as it cuts out an entire segment of the work force. Texas Instruments VP Tegwin Pulley says the socially meaningful and family-friendly aspects of technical careers must be played up if more women are to be drawn to them. There are signs that the gender gap is shrinking in Texas public schools and colleges, although girls are still underrepresented in more advanced subjects such as physics and computer science. Experts again blame cultural expectations for this shortfall. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, April 22, 2005 "Interest in CS as a Major Drops Among Incoming Freshmen" Computing Research News (05/05) Vol. 17, No. 3; Vegso, Jay The results of a survey from the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles (HERI/UCLA) estimate a more than 60 percent decline in the number of incoming freshmen thinking they would major in computer science (CS) between the fall of 2000 and 2004. The popularity of CS as a major among female undergraduates dropped 80 percent in the last seven years, and 93 percent since its all-time high in 1982. The Computing Research Association's Taulbee Survey of Ph.D.-granting CS departments confirms a four-year, 39 percent decline in the number of newly declared CS majors, while the last two years have each experienced a 7 percent annual drop in enrollments. A gap has always existed between newly-enrolled female undergrads indicating CS as a possible major and their male counterparts, but that gap has widened dramatically in the last few decades, doubling in the 1980s and tripling in the 1990s. CS appears to have lost its allure to incoming women freshmen, and this led to a fall-off in women earning CS degrees in the 1980s. The next expected fall in degree production, stemming from the dwindling popularity of CS as a major as indicated in the HERI/UCLA survey, has made it difficult to perceive how CS can fulfill projected future needs for IT professionals without boosting female undergrads' participation. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, April 20, 2005 "What IT Women Want" Computerworld (04/18/05) P. 33; Melymuka, Kathleen A virtual roundtable of successful businesswomen moderated by Kathleen Melymuka discussed the challenges faced by women in IT and what recruiters and employers should do to attract and retain them. Scites Associates President Jan Scites said "the fundamental issue for women is that very few are going into IT," while Walk & Associates President Mary Anne Walk warned that a lack of sufficient development of women in all professional sectors will lead to a 35 million-person labor shortfall by 2031. Walk added that IT organizations are still male-centric and not quick to accept women's views, while consultant Kim Shand said that many IT organizations are in the dark about IT women's requirements and are not actively trying to learn what those requirements are. Analyst Dorie Culp said most women's problems in IT are derived from the prevailing business culture, which marginalizes women and either lacks flexible work policies or discourages women from taking advantage of such policies. The panelists recommended strategies that IT organizations could and should follow to hire and retain women, including mentoring, training programs that emphasize functional and leadership skills, flexibility, community development, the establishment of female role models, and active research into women's needs. The forum advised IT-career-minded women to understand the business and what it demands, and acquire the training to be able to satisfy those demands; to be flexible and create flexibility via technology; to network, learn to communicate effectively, and practice solidarity with fellow women in IT; and to deliver results. Sylvia Weaver said IT managers should realize that women can play a key role in understanding and translating business needs into technology, while Culp recommended that managers court women's input. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, April 18, 2005 "Tech-Savvy Women Seek Support in Classroom and Newsroom" Online Journalism Review (04/14/05); Royal, Cindy Both online and print media are suffering from a shortage of female IT professionals, which is partly attributed to a perception of IT as a boring or geeky field, a lack of encouragement from educators and parents, and the attitude that the reigning authorities are dedicated to marginalizing or muting women's IT participation. Cindy Royal of the University of Texas at Austin's School of Journalism writes that one way to reverse this trend is to expand the stable of technical skills offered in communications, liberal arts, and other disciplines that already boast a high percentage of women. Skills such as database application development and Java programming are becoming increasingly important in these fields, concurrent with the growing sophistication of communication applications. Royal cites research demonstrating that women are more likely to embrace computing when it is part of meaningful and purposeful pursuits. This conclusion is consistent with University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor Eric Meyer's reasoning that technology should be contextualized to the communication applications in order to sustain women's interest. Royal writes that attaining experience with higher-end technology would benefit communications students of both genders by increasing their skill sets and marketability and offering an outlet for creative expression; the field of communications would benefit by having the future of media shaped by technologically adept people. Challenges inherent to realizing this vision include finding qualified educators and role models, and integrating such skills into the curriculum without going over budget. Royal says her approach does not exclusively focus on women, but acknowledges that it would produce a greater number of tech-experienced women grounded in communication concepts and values. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, April 13, 2005 "How Women in IT Make It to the Top" Federal Computer Week (04/11/05) Vol. 19, No. 10, P. 26; Ferris, Nancy Women who hold high-ranking positions in the federal information technology sector do not perceive a glass ceiling, which Office of Management and Budget e-government and IT administrator Karen Evans disparages as an outmoded concept. Success stories such as Evans are marked by an enthusiasm for learning, versatility, and a can-do, risk-taking attitude. Role models have also played an important part in these women's career tracks: Debra Filippi, who serves as program director for the Defense Information Systems Agency's Net-Centric Enterprise Services, says her father taught her the value of a solid work ethic. Filippi and Adair Martinez of the Department of Veterans Affairs note the importance of great bosses who do not micromanage and who provide employees with growth opportunities. However, Martinez acknowledges that there is little chance of advancement for leaders of support operations such as IT; "IT is its own glass ceiling," she comments. Gender-based discrimination is a reality, but the problem is less pronounced in federal organizations such as the Social Security Administration thanks to good managers and a commitment to a diverse workforce, as SRA International senior VP and former SSA staffer Kathleen Adams recounts. Acquisitions Solutions President and former USDA CIO Anne Reed says frequent movements to other organizations throughout her career were key to her success, and also cites the advantages of participating in professional organizations and activities. Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems and Solutions VP Carlaine Blizzard says the increased presence of women in the Army has raised women's comfort levels in that sector, but cautions that the most formidable challenge for women is striking a balance between career and family obligations. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, April 8, 2005 "A Long and Winding Road for IT Women" Computerworld Canada (04/01/05); Ho, Vanessa With the percentage of women in technology fields dropping to mid-1960s levels in Canada, attendees at a Canadian Information Processing Society gathering worried a greater "geek" stigma would be attached to the field and that the industry would not be able to meet future recruiting requirements. Analyst Roberta Fox said school counselors were still discouraging girls from pursuing careers in IT, on top of the biased advice many girls received from friends and family. For that reason, Fox continues to attend school career days to encourage young women to explore careers in technology. The Software Human Resources Council reports that percentages of women in IT have dropped from 25.4 percent in March 2000 to just 22.8 percent in November 2004. While the decline is unexplained, it could make the IT workplace even less appealing to new female entrants. Fox said there were general differences between men and women IT workers, especially women's tendency to focus on relationships at cost of their own needs and careers. But relationship-building skills are increasingly in demand as the IT workforce is pushed closer to business functions, she noted. Many women in IT find roles as project managers, business analysts, and help desk staffers because of their relationship-oriented skills. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, April 11, 2005 "Hoping Girls Get a Kick Out of Computers" Baltimore Sun (04/08/05) P. 1F; Burris, Joe The University of Maryland, Baltimore County's Center for Women and Information Technology (CWIT) this weekend will hold its annual Computer Mania Day, an event designed to fuel an interest in information technology among young girls. Computer Mania Day is expected to draw more than 600 middle school girls, who will witness demonstrations of how IT impacts their lives each day, and learn about successful women in the IT field. CWIT director Claudia J. Morrell believes that reaching girls at the initial stage when they are dealing with self-esteem issues and thinking about what they want to do when they grow up is one of the keys to dealing with the low number of women in the IT industry. The comments of Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers earlier in the year about why there are so few women in IT has not discouraged the CWIT and Morrell. "He just brought to the forefront something that's been subtly going on in the background for years, the subtle discrimination, lack of belief, lack of support, lack of awareness of the barriers women face," says Morrell. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, April 4, 2005 "Women Dominate IT Courses But More Men Get Degrees" Stuff (NZ) (04/04/05); Schwarz, Reuben The Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) estimates that female IT students at tertiary institutions outnumbered male IT students in 2004, yet more men than women continue to earn IT degrees. Fifty-five percent of students in polytech IT courses last year were women, compared to about 38 percent of students studying IT at university over the past two years; women accounted for 63 percent of IT students at private training schools in 2004, compared to less than 50 percent in 2003. However, just 25 percent of Bachelor of Information Science students at Wellington-based WelTec polytech were female last year, although WelTec director Murray Wills hopes that more women will be drawn to polytech IT courses because classes are smaller and there is a greater focus on application. TEC's Bill Lennox thinks the gap between TEC and polytech estimates may be due to the TEC's concentration on courses taken, compared to polytechs' emphasis on students attempting to gain qualifications. Women in Technology general manager Cheryl Horo notes that TEC's figures do not estimate the number of women who complete their courses or enter the industry upon graduation, which would demonstrate an even smaller female presence. Gwyn Claxton with Auckland University of Technology's (AUT) computer and information sciences school reports that many potential female students are discouraged from enrolling in IT courses because they perceive IT as a geeky, mathematically-inclined boys' club. Fifty percent of AUT's faculty are women, but that does not seem to have encouraged more female IT enrollments. Horo sees a need to step up efforts to repudiate the geeky image of IT students by "[promoting] careers in industry rather than qualifications." Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, March 30, 2005 "Even Tech Execs Can't Get Kids to Be Engineers" Wall Street Journal (03/29/05) P. B1; Grimes, Ann Technology executives are stressing the United States' need to step up its efforts to get more young people interested in engineering so that an engineer shortage can be mitigated and the country can maintain its global competitiveness. The decline in interest in engineering careers hits close to home for many executives, as their own children are resistant to the idea because of outsourcing and other factors. A recent A.T. Kearney study of 2,800 Silicon Valley students found that most respondents were not interested in high-tech careers because they viewed such professions as socially isolating, boring, or overwhelming. Silicon Valley venture capitalist Susan Mason recalls that her two stepdaughters spurned a career in computer engineering because "They wanted to have more interactions with people on a 'human' level." Many executives' kids frequently cite outsourcing as an argument against becoming an engineer, explaining that they do not wish to relocate overseas or even to another state. Dean of the University of Southern California's engineering school C.L. Max Nikias reports that only 50 percent of the approximately 120,000 students who are initially interested in engineering at U.S. universities and colleges earn engineering degrees, and he is trying to improve retention by establishing a new curriculum as well as a career-centric speakers program. The United States' ranking in the number of undergraduate engineers and natural scientists produced worldwide has fallen from No. 3 in 1975 to No. 17 now. "Why IT Workers Are Lying About Their Age" Financial Times (03/30/05) P. 8; Thomas, Kim The IT industry is riddled with ageist recruitment policies, according to over-40 IT professionals who have often had to lie about their age to attract interest from prospective employers. Unemployed IT veteran Tony Wells, 49, claims these practices are partly responsible for a shortage in skilled IT personnel. The U.K. Department of Work and Pensions reported in 2002 that professionals aged 35 and younger comprise 56 percent of the IT workforce, compared to 38 percent of the overall workforce; a survey performed by the Employers Forum on Age and Silicon.com indicates that age plays a part in IT recruitment decisions made by 31 percent of those in charge of the hiring process. Association of Technology Staffing Companies CEO Ann Swain says ageism in IT is usually an unconscious rather than conscious practice. "I think there is a view that someone recruits a person like themselves," she says. "And because of the nature of IT, that has generally been someone 28 to 35, male, a graduate from a decent university." Wells and others think recruitment agencies and employers are over-emphasizing job candidates with specific skills in recent technologies, and Wells suggests that hiring decisions should be based on the candidates' ability and experience instead. New anti-ageism laws will come into effect in October 2006, and although their impact may not be immediately apparent, they are expected to force a re-examination of the IT sector's hiring processes. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, March 28, 2005 "Stemming the Tide of Women Leaving I.T." NewsFactor Network (03/25/05); Hill, Kimberly The percentage of women in IT fell by about half between 1985 and 1995 to just 20 percent, and this number continues to decline, says Meta Group analyst Maria Shafer. Shafer and University of Arkansas professor Deb Armstrong attribute this erosion of female IT professionals and IT-related college graduates to a number of factors, including a lack of mentors and mentor programs, inflexible scheduling, and the perception of an IT career as a solitary pursuit. Shafer thinks companies should start making a better effort to recruit women before they graduate from college through mentor programs and similar initiatives, not only to sustain women's interest in IT-related fields during their education, but to cultivate an IT workforce that can take the reins from retiring baby boomers. Armstrong says home responsibilities can be an obstacle for female IT staffers who need to continuously improve their skills, especially since workday schedules are often rigid; she recommends that companies take such responsibilities into consideration and offer women more flexible scheduling. Meanwhile, Shafer thinks businesses should provide social networking and job rotation opportunities in order to overcome female employees' perception of IT as a socially isolating, wholly technical profession. Yankee Group analyst Sheryl Kingstone says this is one reason why many women leave IT for careers in related fields that marry both technical competence and communication and interpersonal skills. To combat the stereotypical view of IT careers, Shafer recommends that companies heavily advertise successful women in IT, and employ well-established female IT professionals as recruiters whenever possible. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, March 23, 2005 "Careers for Women in IT Is at Risk" MC Press Online (03/01/05); Stockwell, Thomas M. MC Press Online editor in chief Thomas Stockwell notes that women rose in the workplace in general and IT in particular up to 1996, when 41 percent of IT workers were female and pay scales between male and female IT professionals were nearing equivalency. However, the National Science Foundation estimates that the female IT workforce dived 15 percent between 1996 and 2002, while the percentage of women receiving bachelor's degrees in computer science fell from 37 percent to 28 percent between 1985 and 2001. Caroline Slocock, CEO of Britain's Equal Opportunities Commission, reasons that this decline could be attributable to a scarcity of promotional prospects for entry-level female IT workers, as well as a lower pay scale. Stockwell sees IT outsourcing and H-1B visas also playing a significant role in the erosion of women in IT. Some analysts suggest companies could use declines in the salaries of H-1B visa holders to circumvent published Human Resources guidelines for hiring IT professionals and compress the wages of medium-salary workers; these workers would naturally be women who historically earn less than men in IT. Meanwhile, outsourcing is squeezing out workers caught between staffers with seniority and imported lower-wage earners, and analysts raise the possibility that more women than men are getting laid off because of de facto "structural" discrimination. These trends have subsequently discouraged female college students from studying computer science and pursuing IT careers. Most analysts concur that management must not just understand what structural, cultural, and financial factors are responsible for creating these IT inequities, but also find ways to identify these factors before they can negatively impact other departments. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, March 21, 2005 "The Information Technology Factor" Morning News (AR) (03/20/05); Van Hoy, Shea Professors Cindy Riemenschneider and Deb Armstrong of the University of Arkansas' Sam M. Walton College of Business examined why fewer women have been getting involved in IT careers in recent years, and have concluded that time management and sources of stress at home and in the office are the chief factors in women's departure from the IT field. Riemenschneider explains that IT is constantly deadline- and training-oriented, and dealing with this and familial duties gives rise to turnover as well as promotional obstacles. The UA researchers say flexibility is a major element in improving career satisfaction, and Heather Letterman of Data-Tronics says her company is aware that IT workers are frequently on call 24 hours a day and makes allowances by letting employees take time off during normal business hours if necessary. Data-Tronics data coordinator Cindy House says technological advancements have also helped give female IT workers more flexibility, an example of which are home connections that facilitate job-related tasks outside the office. Meanwhile, a report from the Information Technology Association of America's (ITAA) Blue Ribbon Diversity Panel lists entry barriers for women that include a shortage of role models and opportunities to network, fewer female science and engineering graduates, a negative image of the IT industry, recruiting stereotypes, and an absence of strong corporate commitment. However, the ITAA report points out that the amount of women holding professional IT jobs expanded from 25 percent to 25.3 percent between 1996 and 2002, even as the overall number of female IT workers declined in the same period. Tyson Foods CIO Jerri Dunn says making young women aware of career opportunities is crucial to hiring female IT workers, and advises women to continually attend networking events. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, March 16, 2005 "Want to Increase Retention of Your Female Students?" Computing Research News (03/05) Vol. 17, No. 2; Werner, Linda L.; Hanks,Brian; McDowell, Charlie National Science Foundation-funded research conducted by a team of four University of California, Santa Cruz professors and one Fort Lewis College professor suggests that pair programming in introductory programming courses can aid the retention of female students in computer science (CS)-related majors and play a key role in closing the CS gender gap. Pair programming is a technique in which two programmers--a "driver" who enters program code and a "navigator" who looks for errors and provides advice--collaborate on a project, exchanging roles regularly. Traditional introductory programming courses generally require that students work by themselves, a situation that can give them the mistaken impression that software development is a field characterized by social isolation. Pair programming actually dovetails with the collaborative development of working-world, non-trivial software projects. The research team introduced pair programming to introductory CS courses with over 500 students, and concluded that participants exhibited greater confidence in the programming assignments and more enthusiasm in completing assignments than students who worked alone, and had a higher probability of finishing and passing the course. Paired students' performance on individually taken final exams matched that of solo students; paired students were equally likely to pass subsequent programming courses where pair programming was not used, and had a higher likelihood of registering as CS-related majors one year later. The researchers discovered that the percentage of paired programmers, both male and female, who went on to declare a CS-related major was significantly higher than the percentage of students who programmed alone. Click Here to View Full Article "Video Games--A Girl Thing?" CNet (03/15/05); Winegarner, Beth Sony Online Entertainment senior game designer Sheri Graner Ray is a crusader for increasing women's presence in the video game developer and game player communities, and was honored with the International Game Developers Association's Community Contribution award at last week's Game Developers Conference. Ray, whose contributions include the seminal textbook "Gender Inclusive Game Design: Expanding the Market" and the Girls in Games volunteer organization, says in an interview that the game industry is now acknowledging the reality of female gamers and is more actively pursuing this market segment. Ray's advocacy began with her curiosity as to why most women--even those in the industry--are disinterested in video games, and she says the reasons for this disinterest will be better understood once females comprise half of all gamers as well as half of all developers. A lack of female characters or "avatars" to play is one barrier to women's participation in video games, and Ray believes this issue will be addressed. She says women want female avatars to exhibit heroic traits such as youth and strength, but without over-exaggerating their sexuality, as is usually the case. As a consultant for other game developers and software firms, Ray has often been confronted with the question, "How do we make games for girls?," but she thinks the question that should be asked is, "How do we get more women to play our games?" Ray observes that more women play massively multiplayer games than PC standalone or console titles partly because multiplayer games can accommodate a broader range of play styles. She also notes that women often play a key role in keeping multiplayer game communities together because of their tendency to internalize the game. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, March 14, 2005 "Feds Line Up Women for ICT Summit" ZDNet Australia (03/08/05) The Australian government has named ICT recruitment industry expert Penny Coulter to an advisory group that will help organize a Women in ICT summit this year. The summit is an effort to raise the number of women working in the ICT industry, says Senator Helen Coonan, Minister for Communications, Information Technology, and the Arts. "The government made a commitment at the last election to convene a summit involving leaders in the ICT industry and education to identify and address the barriers that may be keeping women out of the ICT sector," says Coonan. The Australian Computer Society has lauded the government for addressing the issue. "The ACS has already begun to explore this issue with interested parties and is calling for a summit to allow a range of views to be aired and further work to be commissioned," says ACS President Edward Mandla. The panel will feature a contingent from the corporate world that includes Qantas CIO Fiona Balfour, Thoughtware Australia CEO Sonja Bernhardt, Aspect Computing founder Lyndsey Cattermole, Expertise Australia Group CEO Megan Cornelius, and industry veteran Sheryle Moon. The education sector will be represented by Flinders University deputy vice-chancellor Joan Cooper, Pymble Ladies' College head of information technology Rathika Suresh, Griffith University associate professor Liisa von Hellens, and Tasmanian Department of Education manager of Web strategy Beth Warren. Click Here to View Full Article Why Women Leave I.T. By Kimberly Hill NewsFactor Network, March 9, 2005 11:19AM While women tend to indicate the same needs for challenging work and have the same ambitions as their male I.T. worker counterparts, some aspects of their lives simply make achieving the balance more difficult. The fact is that women still shoulder the burden of domestic responsibilities. Read the article Women in Computer Science at University of Victoria From O'Reilly Developers Weblogs, February 28, 2005 Globalization and women, copyright infringement in open source, and other news from LinuxWorld Andy Oram, January 26, 2005 ... women are often better at doing systems analysis and fitting solutions to real-world problems Read the Article From ACM's TechNews, February 28, 2005 "Women Making Strides in IT Sector" Canada NewsWire (02/25/05) Canada's association of information technology professionals plans to address the under-representation of women in the IT industry during its fifth annual "Women in IT: Looking Towards the Future" program. The series of nine Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS) events across the country kicks off Feb. 26, 2005, at the University of Alberta, and runs through April 26, 2005. CIPS says high school girls gain mentors in women IT professionals. According to an informal survey of 10 universities, CIPS found that more women are earning computer science degrees, but the number of graduates is still small and women represent than less 25 percent of the IT workforce. "More than ever, we need to continue to reach out to young women and show them the benefits of a career in IT," says CIPS director Pat Gaudet. The Software Human Resource Council reports that women accounted for 130,593 (22.8 percent) of Canada's 572,547-member IT workforce in November 2004, down from 25.4 percent in March 2000. "Enrollments in computing related courses continue to decline in part because students, parents and school counselors continue to hear discouraging reports about the state of the IT sector in Canada," states Software Human Resource Council Chair Faye West. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, February 25, 2005 "Go for IT: Conference Tells Grade-Nine Girls" IT World Canada (02/24/05); Pickett, Patricia Lasha Dekker, Microsoft Canada's vice president of developer and platform evangelism, prepared for her keynote address at the Explore IT Conference on Feb. 23 by interviewing grade-nine girls about their perceptions of IT careers, and composing a presentation that debunked key myths. She noted that girls often view IT careers as "geeky," dull, and socially as well as physically isolating. Dekker used her own experiences to relate the reality of an IT career to conference attendees, noting that there are diverse IT fields--research and development, sales and marketing, programming--to choose from, as well as opportunities to travel and deal with different kinds of customers. She said her arc toward an IT career was mostly a matter of luck rather than guidance from others, as she had an affinity for math and science at an early age. Noting that a mere 20% of college or university computer science graduates are currently women, Dekker declared, "For girls...interested in IT, I want to underscore that they should go for it, and for the ones that are not sure, they should at least consider it and explore the opportunities available in IT." Victor Doerksen, Minister of Innovation and Science for the Canadian province of Alberta, says his government division is committed to raising science awareness among grade-nine students of both genders. "We want to encourage them to stay in math and sciences to give them more options for the future," he says. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, February 7, 2005 "Opening Doors for Women in Computing" CNet (02/07/05); Frauenheim, Ed; Gilbert, Alorie Women's shrinking presence in IT has become a major area of focus since Harvard University President Lawrence Summers suggested last month that innate gender differences could partially explain why women are less successful at science and math. Some scholars argue that biology is less influential than stereotypical views of computing jobs as nerdy and male-oriented, while the long hours they often entail can be discouraging for women who want to raise families. Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer Radia Perlman notes that women are more susceptible to self-doubt and insecurity than men, and she thinks tech companies should take this into account by making the business culture less cutthroat. Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard software engineer April Slayden fits the profile of women who are attracted to technology as a vehicle for making a social difference. The National Science Foundation estimates that women accounted for just 28 percent of computer science bachelor's degrees in 2001, down from 37 percent in 1985; meanwhile, the percentage of female IT professionals fell from 33 percent in 1990 to 26 percent in 2002. However, some initiatives to boost those numbers appear to be having a positive effect. For example, female enrollments in Carnegie Mellon University's computer science school have increased significantly since the institution changed its eligibility requirements to place less emphasis on prior programming experience. And UCLA has received grants from Hewlett-Packard to overhaul an introductory course in electrical engineering so that students can use wireless instant messaging to send questions to the instructor during class--a strategy that is less intimidating for shy students. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, October 15, 2004 "Fewer Women in Computer Jobs These Days; Greener Pastures--and Wallets--for Tech Workers?" CNet (10/13/04); Frauenheim, Ed The percentage of female computer systems analysts and scientists, programmers, and postsecondary computer science teachers declined from 30.5 percent in 1983 to 27.2 percent in 2002, according to an Oct. 13 report from the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology. The study also finds that the presence of women has risen in all natural science professions, while females accounted for 14 percent of all engineering jobs in 2002, up from 10 percent in 1983. However, the portion of female math and computer scientists, programmers, and postsecondary math and computer science teachers fell by 0.8 of a percentile to 29.9 percent between 1983 and 2002. Meanwhile, the percentage of all U.S. jobs held by women has increased from 44 percent to 47 percent in the last 20 years, and the proportion of women in scientific, engineering, mathematical, and technological professions has expanded from between 16 percent and 19 percent in 1983 to between 23 percent and 26 percent in 2002, depending on how such jobs are defined. In a related story, an Oct. 13 Meta Group report projects that IT workers will experience as much as a 15 percent increase in salary in the next three years, while expected economic improvements over the next 12 months will spur key IT professionals to seek "greener pastures" in the form of more development opportunities and higher-paying jobs. The creation of new jobs in technology-related services categories and increased hiring by tech services is tempered by declining confidence in the job market among IT workers, as indicated in a poll. Meta advises CIOs to concentrate harder on human resources management programs to retain important IT employees. Click Here to View Full Article "What Do Women Game Designers Want?" New York Times (10/14/04) P. E1; Hafner, Katie Female computer game designers, programmers, and producers are as rare as female game players: About 10 percent of gaming industry professionals are women, and most of them hold jobs in customer service, quality assurance, and marketing, according to informal estimates. Ion Storm executive producer and longtime gamer Denise Fulton observes that a major obstacle to women's pursuit of gaming industry careers is gaming's reputation "as a boy thing." Harvey Mudd College computer science professor Elizabeth Sweedyk, who is designing a female-oriented game design course with a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, thinks that women find computer games unappealing for the most part. At last month's Women's Game Conference in Austin, a common complaint against games in general was graphic violence and sexually suggestive depictions of female characters, while some attendees expressed a desire for games with more immersive story lines and more relatable characters. Programmer Nicky Robinson, also a game enthusiast, says she felt obliged to improve gaming's appeal to women by designing less cluttered, more intuitive user interfaces. Sony Online Entertainment's Sheri Graner Ray says the first step to getting women interested in careers in game design is to get them interested in playing games by raising awareness. "As we do that, and get more women into the industry, the games they make will have much broader appeal," she remarks. Robinson points out that some game companies are overwhelmingly male-oriented, which can be a further discouragement to women; she notes, for instance, that employees often discuss business in terms of sports metaphors, while upper management harbors a macho attitude. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, October 6, 2004 "Uneven Equation" Daily Bruin (10/04/04); Fernando, Menaka Engineering schools have fewer female students compared to other fields of study for a variety of reasons, but rolls of female engineers have slowly grown over the last few decades. UCLA has maintained an approximately 20 percent statistic for female engineering students over the last five years, though drops in new first-year and transfer students are likely to bring down those numbers by a few points. Low numbers of women engineers is the result of problems in K-12 education, says education researcher Jane Margolis, who founded the computer science training program for the Los Angeles Unified School District. She notes that only 17 percent of the students taking the Advanced Placement Computer Science exam are girls, roughly the same percentage of female engineering students in colleges. UCLA materials engineering student Sophia Wong says a lot of the problem is in people's perception of engineering: Wong did not realize what engineers did until her high school chemistry teacher encouraged her to pursue the subject and she had an opportunity to do research with a Stanford professor. "The thing to tell [prospective women engineers] would be that you can do anything with it--whether it is materials or electronics or the environment," she suggests. Interestingly, lesser-known engineering fields such as agricultural and environmental engineering draw far more women than do the mainstay mechanical and electrical engineering studies. University of Michigan professor Jacquleynne Eccles, who studied uneven gender ratios in engineering, found male students considered mathematics to be of more use than females. Click Here to View Full Article From Business Week Insider, September 17, 2004 The New Mothers of Invention Statistics leave little doubt that female entrepreneurs still face formidable obstacles. That's the bad news. The glad tidings are that they are overcoming them as never before http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/sep2004/sb20040915_3237.htm?c=bwinsidersep17&n=link18&t=email From ACM's TechNews, September 15, 2004 "Women Make Inroads in Video Game Industry" Associated Press (09/10/04); Slagle, Matt Peter Raad with Southern Methodist University's Guildhall school of video game making estimates that women comprise less than 10 percent of all game developers, and says that it would be in the gaming industry's best interest to bring in more female developers. People such as Laura Fryer, director of Microsoft's Advanced Technology Group, think more women could be attracted to video game development through education, particularly by spreading awareness among women that game making is a multidisciplinary enterprise that does not necessarily require programming skills. The motivation behind the inaugural Women's Game Conference in Austin, Texas, is to challenge some of the long-held assumptions that video games are primarily attractive to and designed by male "geeks," while Guildhall has teamed up with the game review Web site WomenGamers.com and the online female job recruiting site Mary-Margaret.com to set up a video game scholarship for women, believed to be the first in the nation. Fryer contends that the lack of women game developers has led to general ignorance of half the U.S. population's opinions on game content. Many people agree that there is a demand for less violent, story-driven games with more female lead characters, while the Entertainment Software Association estimates that women account for about 40 percent of gamers. WomenGamers.com co-founder Ismini Roby notes that women are stereotypically perceived as preferential to simple puzzles or card games. Click Here to View Full Article From EduPage, August 27, 2004 SMU Offers Women's Gaming Scholarship Reuters, 26 August 2004 Officials at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas, have announced a scholarship program intended to draw more women into the field of developing video games. Data from an industry trade group, the Entertainment Software Association, indicate that 39 percent of game players are female and that women purchase about half of all games sold, but the majority of developers of games remains male. The Game Development Scholarship for Women is restricted to women attending an 18-month certificate program for game development at SMU. Officials of the certificate program, called The Guildhall, are working with WomenGamers.com and recruitment service Mary-Margaret.com to secure funding for the scholarship. Currently, tuition for The Guildhall is $37,000. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?storyID=6081450 From ACM's TechNews, August 27, 2004 "Career Path Boost Needed to Entice Women Into IT" VNUNet (08/20/04); Mortleman, James The U.K. Equal Opportunity Commission (EOC) wants policymakers, employers, educators, and students to work together to increase the percentage of women in the IT field. The EOC recently found the percentage of women in the IT workforce has fallen from 23 percent to 20 percent. Programs such as e-skills UK's Computer Clubs for Girls helped promote IT to younger students, but a more concerted strategy was needed, said EOC chief executive Caroline Slocock. While the 20 percent of women in IT positions is certainly better than just two percent for construction or eight percent for engineering, it still falls far behind numbers represented in the overall economy. Slocock also noted that formerly male-dominated professions such as law and medicine now see greater numbers of women entrants than men, and that attributing the lack of women in IT to preference is not acceptable. Educators and other people who advise female students need to encourage them to pursue careers they might not think of as traditionally for women, and challenge students who might be limiting themselves. Advisors should let female students know the pay differentials between IT and other fields, for example. Slocock said there were fewer women in leadership positions in the IT field--with just 15 percent of women in IT management and 11 percent of women in IT strategy planning--so that, overall, women in the IT industry earned 18 percent less than male colleagues. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, August 16, 2004 "Old Boys' Clubs Contribute to Gender Gap in IT" EurekAlert (08/10/04) Penn State researchers are trying to gain a deeper understanding of why women are underrepresented in the IT industry. "The lack of women isn't due to the biological traits of the sexes, and it isn't just because IT is a male domain," said Penn State professor Eileen Trauth while presenting a paper entitled, "Exploring the Importance of Social Networks in the IT Workforce: Experiences With the 'Boys Club,'" at the Tenth Americas Conference on Information Systems on Aug. 8. Trauth says some women enjoy interacting with men and prefer to do so. Other women respond to old boys' networks by developing interests that will lead to acceptance, or by creating alternative networks or choosing not to participate. The multiyear study, funded by the National Science Foundation, included 45 women between 23 and 57 years of age representing a range of racial backgrounds, who were in and not in committed relationships, and had different educational levels. Managers would do well to create more social networking opportunities, and help develop skills for creating social networks. "Our research is showing that the gender gap in the IT workforce results from the complex interactions of a number of factors that includes what one obtains from a social network--namely, access to information, resources, and opportunities," Trauth says. Click here to view full article From ACM's TechNews, August 11, 2004 "A Few Good Women" U.S. News & World Report (08/16/04) Vol. 137, No. 5, P. EE2; McDonald, Marci Little attention has been paid to the decline of women pursuing degrees in computer science and engineering, but the impending retirement of baby boomers in the tech industry, combined with a smaller stream of foreign brainpower because of homeland security issues and tighter visa rules, has fueled concerns that the United States' tech leadership could be jeopardized by a lack of skilled high-tech professionals. "We need highly competent people here, and one of the answers is to attract that 50 percent of the population that's not being tapped," notes Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology President Telle Whitney. Over the last 20 years, the number of women graduating with computer science degrees has decreased from 37 percent to 28 percent, while the percentage of women earning degrees in other scientific and engineering disciplines has skyrocketed. Women are discouraged from earning computer science degrees because they feel alienated and too inadequate to effectively compete in a male-dominated field, and Microsoft has funded a Computing Research Association-sponsored workshop to bring female computer science and engineering graduates into contact with successful role models. Other programs organized to boost women's confidence include Rutgers University's creation of student support groups, and the MentorNet program, which assigns female students to online mentors. Six U.S. high-tech companies plan to contribute to a National Science Foundation "service learning" project to change college-level computer science and engineering courses so that there is more focus on giving students hands-on experience and credits. Many industry players are trying to prevent misperceptions about high-tech careers from taking root in grade-school girls by setting up summer programs and other initiatives. Sun Microsystems' Greg Papadopoulos says rehabilitating the image of high-tech as an "uncool" or "nerdy" profession is vital to the industry. Click here to view full article From ACM's TechNews, July 28, 2004 "Horizon Programs Introduce Girls to Career Possibilities in Technical Fields" Newswise (07/23/04) Clarkson University's Horizons programs encourage girls in middle school to pursue technology-oriented careers. The National Council for Research on Women reports that the number of women working in engineering and computing fields has stayed roughly the same for the last two decades, despite a rise in the number of women scientists. The Horizons camps offer girls a view into possible technical careers through hands-on workshops that introduce them to fields such as robotics and chemistry, as well as the opportunity to view women role models. The girls are targeted at an age where they are defining their identity and forming conceptions about what is possible for their future education and career, says program director and school psychologist Bobbi Laird. Horizons sends invitations to participating schools throughout New York where two seventh-grade girl students are nominated to join in the camp. The first-year program involves science, mathematics, and computer science courses and workshops where students can investigate career opportunities and receive leadership training; participants have the option of re-enrolling for a second-year camp, which involves more sophisticated hands-on projects such as building working robots and conducting environmental analysis. Laird says the program introduces the girls to women role models who are dynamic, critical-thinking leaders and who are interested in helping people. Horizons is part of Clarkson University's Pipeline Programs and Academic Success office, which offers a continuum of support for under-represented students in technology and science throughout their education. Click here to view full article From ACM's TechNews, July 23, 2004 "Apprentice Plan Aims to Close IT Skills Gap" Financial Times (07/22/04) P. 24; Dunne, Nancy Neill Hopkins of the Computer Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) observes that a wide gap exists between the IT skills employers need and the skills workers actually have, and he thinks the solution is the National IT Apprenticeship System (Nitas) CompTIA kicked off in March, which combines on-the-job training and classroom instruction. CompTIA's Steve Ostrowski explains that IT pros expect more company support for career development, especially when businesses acquire emerging technologies. Nitas can help companies complaining that networking and security experts and software developers are in short supply, as well as training companies that want corporate and government financial aid for wannabe IT staff who do not have the money to pay for training. Nitas organizes a "lifelong path" for college students and IT pros, who are to be tested on separate skillsets before being certified on industry-wide standards. The apprenticeship system establishes courses that will be offered by community colleges or authorized commercial learning organizations collaborating with local companies, who guarantee that the apprentices' training fulfills their skills requirements. Employees are selected to participate in the program by their companies, who register as sponsors, and their progress is tracked by a Web-based system. The sponsors pay for training and provide a minimum salary, while participants who lack sponsors can sign up for the program as "pre-apprentices." Attempts will be made to land sponsors for pre-apprentices during their training, but many may fail to get aid from the local boards. From ACM's MemberNet, July 15, 2004 "Regional Celebrations of Women in Computing Offer Local Support" ACM-W, the Committee on Women in Computing, has started a new program of regional Celebrations of Women in Computing, based on the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.... http://campus.acm.org/public/membernet/s.cfm?story=6 Related links include: Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, ACM-W, the Anita Borg Institute of Women in Technology, Computer-Girl Website, and Expanding Your Horizons in Science and Mathematics™ . The ACM-W keeps a database of Articles on Women and Computing and a catalog of Online Resources for Women in Computing. From ACM's TechNews, July 9, 2004 "Make Computers More Fun Say Women" Tiscali.europe (07/08/04) The goal of the Strategies of Inclusion: Gender and the Information Society (SIGIS) study funded by the European Union's Sixth Framework Program (6FP) is to find a way to cross the chasm between genders that has locked many women out of the communication and media technologies sector. The 6FP's British contact for information society research, Peter Walters, observes that males have traditionally held the keys to computers, computer science training, and technical specialist employment, and notes that the lack of gender equilibrium has become a critical issue for both government and industry because of the associated threats of skills shortages, digital exclusion, and unexploited product markets oriented to female consumers. The SIGIS report finds that females no longer regard technology as complex or technical when they are exposed to entertaining offerings such as email and the Web. The gap between male and female computer usage is closing as new information and communications technology (ICT) applications such as the Internet and cell phones proliferate throughout the home, office, and education sector due to falling prices and greater ease of use. However, the predominance of men in specialist ICT training and tech design is acting as a cultural barrier to women. The British, Dutch, Irish, Italian, and Norwegian sponsors of the SIGIS study hope that its findings will spur more women to actively pursue a role in the future development of ICT. Education is seen as a key force for giving people of all genders and socio-economic persuasions access to computers and computing skills. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, June 30, 2004 "High-Tech Equity" Houston Chronicle (06/30/04); Everett-Haynes, La Monica Rice University is trying to raise the percentage of female computer science graduates through its Computer Science Computing and Mentoring Partnership (CS-CAMP). CS-CAMP is a two-week program that helps generate an interest in computer science among young women who otherwise would have no opportunity to cultivate it. The National Science Foundation sponsors the camp, which hosts sessions where almost 50 Houston Independent School District students are taught robot assembly, computer repair, and the use of Java-based programs. Duke University computer science professor Carla Ellis, co-chair of the Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research, says it is critical to introduce computer science concepts to girls in middle and high school, because by the time they are of college age many women lack basic computing knowledge or are intimidated by classes with a dominant male presence. The National Science Center estimates that the percentage of female computer science graduates fell from 37 percent to 28 percent between 1985 and 2001; furthermore, 41 percent of all science and engineering graduates are women, yet just 20 percent graduate with an engineering degree. "The drop-off has been going on, and it's probably going to get a bit more severe," says Ellis, who attributes this decline to a paucity of role models and stereotypical views of science and technology careers as geeky or insular. Michael Sirois of Rice's Center for Excellence and Equity in Education says girls must have a better understanding of the opportunities presented by a science and technology career if they are to be successful. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, June 25, 2004 "Selling Girl Scouts on Science" CIO (06/15/04); Wailgum, Thomas A partnership between the Girl Scouts and corporate and government agencies aims to get girls more interested and skilled in technology to reverse the shortage of female researchers and engineers in the U.S. workforce. "There has always been an interest at the Girl Scouts in making sure that girls have good skills and abilities, and technology is what girls need to understand," explains Girls Scouts of the USA CIO Marcia Balestrino, a former Girl Scout herself. She observes that girls tend to dismiss science and technology as a career choice by the time they are 11 or 12, and view tech professionals as geeky and socially maladroit. "Part of the initiative is to let girls know that there are all kinds of things they can do with a technology career," Balestrino says. Among the awards the organization now offers to encourage technology skills is the Point, Click, Go badge given to Girl Scouts who learn to use the Internet, while more advanced badges can be earned for performing online searches related to projects. A book studied by the Girl Scouts, "Girl Games and Technological Desire," makes a convincing case that males and females use technology in different ways: Boys, for example, use the Internet to find entertainment, whereas girls use it as a socialization tool. Local Girl Scout groups receive educational materials and career information on archaeology, engineering, meteorology, design, and other areas from organizations such as NASA, Lockheed Martin, Intel, and Lucent Technologies. The Girl Scouts conducted a poll two years ago which found that parents usually set down rules for navigating the Internet safely, and stressed the need for positive encouragement among girls. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, June 21, 2004 "Women, Minorities, Persons With Disabilities in Science, Engineering" Newswise (06/16/04) U.S.-based Asian/Pacific Islanders with bachelor's degrees in science and engineering (S&E) are attracting wages that surpass their white peers who are of college age, according to the new report, "Women, Minorities, and Persons With Disabilities in Science and Engineering 2004." The online report also shows that the number of African Americans, Hispanics, and American Indian/Alaska Natives earning S&E degrees continues to grow steadily, although at a slow pace. There has been a tremendous increase in the number of associate and bachelor's degrees awarded since 1997, but women have not followed the trend. Women earned 37 percent of bachelor's degrees in computer science in 1985, but just 28 percent of computer science bachelor's degrees in 2001. Women represent 41 percent of all S&E graduate students, but only 20 percent of women are pursuing engineering degrees. In comparison, nearly 70 percent of Asian/Pacific Islanders who are S&E graduate students have chosen engineering, computer sciences, and biological sciences. Such fields were pursued by 42 percent of whites, and one-third of blacks, Hispanics, and American Indian/Alaska natives. Also a similar percentage of graduate students with disabilities has chosen engineering, computer sciences, mathematics, and life and physical sciences. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, June 14, 2004 "Undergrad Helps Make Engineering More Congenial for Women" Currents--UC Santa Cruz (06/14/04); Stephens, Tim University of California, Santa Cruz computer engineering major Angela Schmid attributes her success to her involvement in student organizations, networking with other women, and finding supportive faculty members. The 2004 Dean's Award honoree was elected co-president of the UCSC chapter of the Society for Women in Engineering in 2002, and she has also served as an officer in the campus branches of the ACM and IEEE. Schmid participated last summer in UCSC's Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Information Technology (SURF-IT), a National Science Foundation-funded program, and is working with computer engineering professor and SURF-IT principal investigator Richard Hughey on the Kestrel parallel processor initiative. Hughey says that this summer's SURF-IT program will bring in 12 students, 10 of them female. He says the availability of female role models and mentors is critical to recruiting and retaining women in science and engineering, which is why he is attempting to have more freshman- and sophomore-level courses in his department taught by female faculty members. Other initiatives to make engineering studies more amenable to women include the addition of a unit on gender issues to an engineering ethics course that all computer and electrical engineering majors are required to take, and deeply entrenched policies for dealing with sexual harassment and discrimination. Schmid is considering the establishment of an honors society for leading computer and electrical engineering students that would coordinate outreach activities to local high schools and community colleges. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, June 9, 2004 "Women Want Computers to Be Less 'Nerdy' and More Fun" Innovations Report (06/08/04) More women will feel comfortable using computers if they are made less "nerdy," but more significant hurdles remain for getting more women working in the IT sector, according to a study sponsored by the European Union's Information Society Technology (IST) program. A team of researchers from five European countries studied 48 public- and private-sector initiatives to increase female participation in IT design and use, and they expect to identify successful strategies and apply them more broadly. IST U.K. representative Peter Walters says the increasing societal importance of IT makes it imperative that companies and government agencies include women in the IT field. Education is a key aspect in this effort, because computers are currently seen as the realm of men and boys who gain knowledge through many years of informal learning. This stereotype associates computers with anti-social and "nerdy" behavior, says University of Edinburgh professor and study coordinator Robin Williams. That concept is slowly breaking down, however, as technology is more and more a part of communications, entertainment, and other fun activities. This has already helped contribute to greater use of IT by women, but the study points out less success in getting women involved in the actual design and development of technology. The study focuses on local initiatives that have worked to increase female enrollment in computer science courses, and also increase the visibility of women who are already successful in that field. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, May 28, 2004 "Is IT Really a Man's World?" TechTarget (05/26/04); Hildebrand, Carol Sheila Greco Associates President Sheila Greco says the percentage of high-ranking female IT professionals in Fortune 1,000 companies has never exceeded 15 percent in the seven years her company has been tracking such figures, while Claudia Morrell of the University of Maryland Baltimore County's Center for Women and Information Technology reports that women are apparently being discouraged from entering the technology field as early as high school. Yet she adds that there are plenty of opportunities for technology-related careers despite mass layoffs in the tech sector and offshoring: The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that there should be 21.5 million high-tech workers by 2006, while about 2 million additional computer specialists will be added to the workforce between 2000 and 2010. "The whole area of creation, development and engineering is really where the U.S. is strong, and the area where women need to be," notes Morrell, who points out that women face virtually no competition. The shortage of female IT workers has spurred a more coordinated effort by hiring authorities to recruit women, observes Greco, who suggests women cultivate both technology and business skills in order to protect themselves against possible tech career shortcomings. Furthermore, the flexibility of computing-based careers is very appealing to women seeking to balance work and family life. Gloria Montana of The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology comments that "Out of all the math/science professions, anything that has to do with software lends itself to more flexibility because it opens up for the commuting situation." She also points out that IT jobs can enable workers to learn skills that can be applied across a wide spectrum of potential careers. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, May 12, 2004 "AU Computer Program Lures Blacks, Women" Birmingham News (05/10/04); Spencer, Thomas Alabama's Auburn University supports the highest concentration of black computer science graduate students and faculty in the United States, and boasts a large number of females enrolled in its computer science graduate program; figures such as these attracted the interest of the National Science Foundation (NSF), which will study the school's successful recruitment and retention of women and minorities in an effort to apply the model to other universities. Since the late 1990s, more than 50 percent of computer science and engineering graduate students in the United States have been foreign-born, but enrollments have been declining for a number of reasons, including increased visa restrictions after 9/11, better-established overseas universities, and increased offshore outsourcing. Human-Centered Computing Lab director Juan Gilbert, a black AU faculty member, believes that America stands to lose its technological leadership unless more women and minorities are brought into the computer science and engineering field. "Diverse backgrounds yield diverse minds, which yield diverse solutions," he attests. The NSF estimates that roughly 9,000 computer science graduates, approximately 100 of them black, were produced by U.S. universities between 1991 and 2000, while only about 150 blacks are taking computer science doctoral courses nowadays. There are currently just eight black computer science doctoral students enrolled at Auburn; almost 9 percent of the total number of black computer science doctorates in the past five years graduated from Auburn. Forty-three percent of Auburn's computer science Ph.D. candidates are female, while the national average for women is fewer than 20 percent of computer science graduates and 14 percent of faculty. Auburn's success in recruiting and holding onto minority computer science and engineering students is primarily attributed to its concentration on people rather than just technology. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's TechNews, April 28, 2004 "Student Develops Innovative Software" Oregon Daily Emerald (04/26/04); Neuman, Steven University of Oregon senior Anna Cavender was named North America's 2004 Outstanding Female Undergraduate in Computer Science and Engineering by the Computing Research Association for her work on EyeDraw, a computer program co-created with recent graduate Rob Hoselton. EyeDraw was designed primarily as a tool that movement-disabled children can use to express themselves and refine their creative talent through drawing. The software uses an eye tracker positioned beneath the computer monitor to recognize and analyze the user's eye movements, allowing users to draw pictures without their hands. Cavender notes that these drawings can be made free of scribbling, which is attributed to previous eye trackers' inability to distinguish between intentional drawing and simple gazing. "We're taking data from the eye tracker into the [EyeDraw] program in the form of x-y coordinates, and manipulating that data to optically draw pictures," notes Cavender. "We use smoothing algorithms so that the jerky nature of eye movements doesn't appear on the screen." Cavender and Hoselton carried out the research for the software in the University of Oregon's cognitive modeling and eye-tracking lab. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's Tech News, April 19, 2004 "Testing Times for Women in IT" VNUNet (04/14/04); Mortleman, James Information technology testing has become an increasingly attractive area of the IT profession for women. Five years ago, females accounted for just five percent of IT testers, but today they represent more than one-third. Now, according to Vizuri, a risk management and recruitment company, if women continue to enter the IT industry at their present pace, they will account for three quarters of IT testers by 2006. Long dominated by men, IT testing is one of the most technical areas of the IT profession. However, IT testing is also very rewarding in terms of career opportunities, salary, and benefits. "Testers love a challenge, so the incentive of breaking the IT industry's glass ceiling is a compelling one," says Vizuri's Paul Dixon. "This surge is merely the start of women's increasing role in this sector--we're sure there'll be plenty more to come." Soft skills, such as interacting with clients and customers, have been an advantage for women as IT testers. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's Tech News, February 23, 2004 "Tin Ears and the Social Fabric" InfoWorld (02/16/04) Vol. 26, No. 7, P. 36; Udell, Jon Within a span of five years, technology that is able to improve the effectiveness of people working together in information environments has grown to include Weblogs, instant messaging, Wikis, and comment threads within blogs, and Web services have been used to create software systems that are loosely joined together. Although the nature of collaboration has not changed, fluid improvisation among team members will be needed if social software is to facilitate business productivity, suggests former Xerox Palo Alto Research Center director John Seely Brown, in a recent New York Times story. "In soccer there are some set plays, but the best teams also display a wealth of effective improvisation based on the players' deep knowledge of one another," Brown explains. "It's the same in the best corporations or startups." Although it is likely that networked software systems would be able to support such improvisation, there is some concern whether the existing software development culture could produce those kind of systems. The tin ears of the latest relationship amplifiers (Linkedln and Orkut) is not a surprise, considering programmers do not have a reputation for being highly social people. Moreover, programming lacks any input from women. Social skills and protocols are a big part of social software, and concerns remain about its development if representatives from half the population are not involved. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's Tech News, January 9, 2004 "New UCI Center Promotes Diversity in Technology Fields" EurekAlert (01/08/04) The Ada Byron Research Center (ABRC) at UC Irvine's School of Information and Computer Science is dedicated to the study of diversity in technology fields, with an emphasis on boosting the recruitment and retention of women, Latinos, African Americans, and other minorities in IT through research, outreach, and educational programming. "Under Dean [Debra J.] Richardson's leadership, ABRC will formalize and leverage current diversity efforts and expand interdisciplinary research and curricular revisions to encourage a more diverse population studying, teaching and creating information technology applications," stated William Parker, UCI vice chancellor for research and graduate studies. ABRC will establish new classes and academic majors at Irvine and other UC campuses to determine the fundamental reasons for the scarcity of women and other underrepresented populations in IT and computing, and tackle the barriers to their full participation in these fields. The center also has a major role in the National Center for Women and Information Technology, a newly established national association of organizations committed to increasing women's presence in the IT sector. Women account for less than 18 percent of all IT jobs, even though almost 50 percent of the U.S. workforce is female; meanwhile, only 30 out of every 1,000 computer science graduates is African American, 12 are Hispanic, and one is Native American. Among the initiatives to be promoted at ABRC is the Outreach Road Show program, which is designed to expose junior high and high school students to science-related career opportunities through classroom demonstrations. Another ABRC program is Laptops for Literacy, which will study laptop computers' potential contribution to students' computer skills and academic achievement, particularly in culturally and linguistically diverse schools. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM's Tech News, November 21, 2003 "Breaking the Glass Firewall" Network World (11/17/03) Vol. 20, No. 46, P. 38; Radcliff, Deborah Alta Associates CEO Joyce Brocaglia thinks women are excellent candidates for information security management because "They're good at communication, relationship management, team-building and multitasking--all of which are essential traits for executive-level positions." Foote Partners co-founder David Foote adds that information security organizations will combine technology, communications, and behavioral sciences, giving women trained in the technical and social sciences more opportunities for advancement. Women's success in the security workforce--about 12 percent of security personnel are female, according to a 2002 salary survey--was the premise behind the recent Alta Associates Executive Women in Information Security Forum. Discussions revolved around the importance of people skills: Guardent CEO Maria Cirino emphasized the need to manage compassionately in times of crisis, while CYA Technologies founder Elaine Price said women managers must keep the company's best interests in mind when hiring or firing staff, even if letting people go is a difficult job. Many attendees and panelists followed unusual career paths or hailed from atypical backgrounds. Trident Capital Partner Becky Bace railed against traditional female roles even as a child, and said information security was the first area she found interesting. During her tenure at the National Security Agency, Bace supported academic and federal research in cryptography and IDS that helped lead to first-generation intrusion detection, while later accomplishments included providing computer forensics training materials for intelligence agencies and a stint as a computer security officer at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Attendees agreed that there should be no male panelists at next year's forum--AOL's Patty Edfors remarked that an all-female conference allows women to more deeply discuss their work and related subjects. Click Here to View Full Article From Edupage, November 12, 2003 Women Face Obstacles In Technology Industry San Jose Mercury News, 12 November 2003 A study by Catalyst, a nonprofit group dedicated to advancing women in business, finds that women in the technology industry face the traditional glass ceiling despite the general perception that the high-tech field is a meritocracy. Almost a third of the study's participants agreed that women have a difficult time getting ahead in the industry, a belief supported by the fact that women make up 11.1 percent of corporate officers among Fortune 500 high-tech companies, compared to 15.7 percent in Fortune 500 firms overall. The study suggests that offering career development, creating mentoring and networking opportunities with other successful women, and fostering greater flexibility will help level the playing field. Efforts at Silicon Valley companies to retain, develop, and advance women are also highlighted. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/7241970.htm From ACM News, November 14, 2003 "Study: Tech Has Glass Ceiling" SiliconValley.com (11/12/03); Guido, Michelle Despite the United States' vanguard position in the area of technological advancement, there is still a dearth of female IT leaders, according to a new study from the nonprofit Catalyst research and advisory group. The study is the result of five roundtable discussions with 75 senior executives, male and female, who attributed women's low penetration into high-ranking IT echelons to various factors, including: A lack of mentors, role models, and networks for women; companies' failure to strategically and objectively recognize and develop skills; an exclusively male corporate culture that frowns upon the advancement of women; and difficulties in balancing family and home life with career goals. "What is surprising is that in an industry that thinks of itself as a meritocracy, women and men both perceive a lack of acceptance of women," observes Catalyst President Ilene H. Lang. Catalyst's Kara Helander also notes that a running theme within the discussion groups was the postulation that women are less prepared than men to assume leadership responsibilities. "People assumed that women are too emotional to be effective leaders, that a woman who has a family won't be willing to travel--which can automatically exclude her from a more high-profile job," she explains, adding that such attitudes allow managers to relegate women to support work, which significantly lowers their opportunities for advancement. To reverse this trend, the Catalyst report advises companies to give women access to career development programs, offer them networking and mentoring opportunities with other women, and nurture more flexibility. The report also cited several companies that have taken positive steps in improving women's chances for attaining leadership positions. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM News, September 29, 2003 "Where Are All the Women IT Leaders?" CIO Insight (10/03) No. 31, P. 76; D'Agostino, Debra An October survey from CIO Insight reveals a significant shortage of women in IT leadership positions--in fact, the number of female IT executives under 40 is less than 50 percent lower than the number of female IT executives over 40. Some analysts call the economic downturn a key factor in the erosion of women IT leaders: "Downsizing means that if women haven't already reached that stage of their careers, then they may not be in the group that gets to stay," reports MAPICS CIO Sandra Hofmann. Meanwhile, the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) estimates that women accounted for just 22 percent of all computer science and engineering undergraduate degrees from 1998 to 2000, while the percentage of women in the general IT workforce fell from 41 percent in 1996 to 34.9 percent in 2002. ITAA President Harris Miller chiefly blames these low percentages on a lingering "geeky" image of IT workers that discourages women from pursuing tech careers. The first step toward boosting the number of women IT leaders is to get more school-age girls interested in technology. Hofmann adds that there should be more female mentors available to other women in the IT field. A study conducted last year by the Center for Women's Business Research shows an increase in women entrepreneurs: Between 1997 and 2002, female private business owners rose 14 percent to total 6.2 million. National Association for Female Executives President Betty Spence attributes this elevation to women's dissatisfaction in having few opportunities for promotion in male-dominated tech businesses. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM News, September 29, 2003 "Borg Honored for Breaking Tech Gender Molds" Silicon Valley Biz Ink (09/26/03); Ascierto, Rhonda Computer scientist and Institute for Women and Technology (IWT) founder Anita Borg staunchly fought to have equal gender representation in the technology industry by 2020, a goal that people are still working toward despite her death in April. Her achievements include the creation of Systers, a Web-based networking community that is currently 2,500 members strong, and her dedication to enabling women to penetrate a male-dominated industry while preserving their feminine perspective. "[Borg] allowed women to bring their whole selves to engineering," says computer researcher and IWT consultant Kathy Richardson. "She showed that if you don't bring who you are...your perspective of the world, then you're not actually bringing that diversity into the workplace." Without such a perspective, many tech products end up being impractical and of limited use, explains Google Technology research and systems engineering VP Alan Eustace, a friend of Borg's. The lack of gender parity in the tech sector is partly attributable to male engineers' discomfort at working with women, notes Richardson. Meanwhile, a survey of over 800 female Silicon Valley residents finds that 41 percent of respondents feel they must adapt to a male-dominated workplace in order to better their chances of advancement, whereas only 23 percent of respondents in non-technology jobs feel the same way. The IWT, along with Google, the Computer Research Association's Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research, and Borg's husband Winfried Wilcke, recently announced a number of yearly cash awards totaling $70,000. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM News, October 3, 2003 "Female IT Professionals Cope in a Male-Dominated Industry" Network World (09/29/03) Vol. 20, No. 39, P. 7; Messmer, Ellen Female professionals account for 25.3 percent of America's IT workforce of 3.6 million employees, according to the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), and women have found competing in a male-dominated industry to be a formidable struggle. At the recent Auto-Tech conference, Nick Andreou of General Motors remarked that some cultures frown on putting women in positions of authority, and even discussing such a problem is disapproved. This issue was mentioned at the Executive Women's Forum by Trend Micro co-founder Eva Chen, who noted that she had to stay low-key on business trips in Japan, where gender bias is rampant. Andreou pointed out that such discrimination is detrimental to business productivity and relationships based on globalization. At the Executive Women's Forum, Oracle's Mary Ann Davidson said that women executives should check their own behavior and not make things tough on others because their own work experiences were hard, while CYA Technologies CEO Elaine Price explained that female workers need a thick skin, especially in the IT salesforce. Sanctum CEO Peggy Weigle advised women to relate their ideas statistically, a practice appreciated by men. Adaptability is another factor: Many women at the conference reported that they had to engage in male-oriented activities, such as golf and drinking at bars, in order to gain credibility among their male peers. A May ITAA report on gender and race suggested that women are lagging in IT partly because of parenting responsibilities, while Stanford computer science professor Eric Roberts observes that many women shun careers in computer science in favor of other positions that offer more human interaction. Meanwhile, a Sheila Greco Associates survey estimates that women make up only 13 percent of IT vice presidents and CIOs, and earn about 9 percent less than men. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM News, September 19, 2003 "Information Technology Field Loses Diversity, Research Finds" Boston Globe (09/14/03); Lewis, Diane E. The Information Technology Association of America reports that between 1996 and 2002 the number of women and African-Americans working in the information technology industry has declined. The association's Blue Ribbon Panel on IT Diversity report reveals that women held 41 percent of IT jobs in 1996, but held only 25.3 percent of IT jobs last year. And the percentage of African-Americans in the IT industry fell from 9.1 percent in 1996, to 6.2 percent in 2002. The report says woman hold 46.6 percent of jobs in the United States, while African-Americans represent 10.9 percent of the workforce. The study suggests that fewer woman and African-Americans are pursuing tech-related degrees in college, but did not analyze the impact that layoffs or the recession might have had on their participation in the industry. The association also found that the number of Asian professionals has risen from 8.9 percent to 13.4 percent, and the number of Hispanics has risen from 5.4 percent to 6.3 percent. Age is also a factor in IT employment; Americans over the age of 45 represent 37.6 percent of the U.S. workforce, but 29.4 percent of the IT industry. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM News, August 25, 2003 "Female MIT Grads Make Mark on Field" Contra Costa Times (08/22/03); Hafner, Katie Three female MIT graduates who were profiled in the New York Times 10 years ago as women who might make a significant impact on the computer industry still support the idea that women should have as large a role in technology as men, although they have diverged somewhat from their original career goals. Ellen Spertus, who teaches computer science at the all-girl Mills College in Oakland, Calif., incorporates courses she was taught at MIT into her own curriculum, but her teaching approach is less stringent; her philosophy is that education "can be simultaneously nurturing and rigorous." Only a handful of Mills students earn bachelor's degrees in computer science or advanced degrees in "interdisciplinary computer science" each year, so Spertus has organized a course directed toward nonmajors that is very popular. Computer chip designer Stephanie Winner wanted to be a role model for other women after noticing the scarcity of females in her field, but her ambitions were sidetracked by her need to balance her work and home life; she now works as a patent agent at a Silicon Valley law firm. Megan Smith spent her student years engineering sophisticated tech projects such as a solar-powered vehicle and a tactile joystick, and was attracted after graduation to Silicon Valley startups such as General Magic, where she developed a greater affinity for business. Although Smith says she regrets her migration away from technology to a certain degree, she has noticed a growing trend among female programmers to become program managers. Though the playing field is by no means level, Telle Whitney of the Institute for Women and Technology expects women's role in IT to expand over the next decade, partly due to new programs that companies such as Microsoft and IBM are developing to promote the education and professional development of female tech workers. http://www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/business/6592996.htm From ACM News, August 6, 2003 "Tech Future for Women Starts Young" Toronto Globe and Mail (07/31/03); Sayiner, Marcie Despite studies indicating that more women than men are going online and assertions from female tech professionals that gender has little to do with their struggle to rise in the industry, IN CONTEXT Managing Partner Marcie Sayiner foresees a shortage of IT women. She cites a Statistics Canada report estimating that the portion of women in the computer and telecommunications industries was about 33 percent in 2002, compared to roughly 38 percent in the early 1990s. Sayiner does, however, see a possible solution to the projected shortage through programs that support next-generation female IT professionals by nurturing an interest in information technology at an early age. Simon Fraser University runs a summer program for girls in sixth and seventh grades that trains them in IT savvy and inventiveness through team-coordinated multimedia projects. Through two summer sessions, participants are "given the opportunity to tell their own digital stories using video, sound and interactive technology," explains SFU Surrey researcher Cindy Poremba. "The focus is on creativity, teamwork, and above all, having fun." Projects are developed with an emphasis on safe Web surfing and technology careers, while more fun is added to the mix with recreational activities. Sayiner is hopeful that programs such as these, coupled with a new generation of women growing up with computers, will narrow the IT gender gap. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM News, April 30, 2003 Leveraging a Global Advantage" InfoWorld (04/21/03) Vol. 25, No. 16, P. 33; Udell, Jon Dynamic, just-in-time software development is being driven by increases in freelance programmers, open-source skills, and offshore outsourcing. The gap between dispersed workers is being bridged by emerging frameworks and the application of collaborative platforms and open source. Assembla founder Andy Singleton says, "It's no accident that all significant open-source projects are global. That thought should be stuck in the mind of anyone who wants to produce world-class software." The development methodology can be directed either by the client or the outsourcer. Outsourcers should be flexible enough to accommodate both methodologies, as EPAM and Virtusa have done. Both clients and outsourcers enlist developers and project leads in a just-in-time software development team that also takes advantage of the global open-source community. Collaborative transparency is a key element of open source's modus operandi, and an essential component of dynamic development; at the same time, it prevents vendor lock-in. IT managers find that open-source software offers them more control, but requires a hefty commitment in terms of time and intellectual effort. Fortunately, offshore outsourcers possess a wealth of such resources. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM News, July 23, 2003 "IT Gender Gap Under Study by Pair at RIT" Rochester Democrat & Chronicle (07/20/03); Daneman, Matthew The National Science Foundation has awarded Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) assistant professors Elizabeth Lane Lawley and Tona Henderson a grant of $323,000 to fund a two-year study of the difficulties female undergraduates encounter in college IT courses. The researchers will spend the first year polling incoming RIT students to determine the issues women face, while the second year will involve a nationwide survey of female IT students to find correlations. The American Association of University Women estimated that the percentage of women who earn bachelor's degrees in computer science fell from 37 percent in 1984 to less than 28 percent in 2000, and other analyses clearly document that computer science studies are male-dominated. There is considerable anecdotal evidence that IT is just as unfriendly toward women as computer science. Only 19 percent of the 678 RIT students who were awarded IT bachelor's degrees in the 1997-1998 school year and the 2001-2002 year were female. Furthermore, IT deans who convened recently in Oregon reported the same problems, according to RIT Associate Dean Eydie Lawson, who adds that one possible reason for this gender gap is a lack of emphasis on the sciences to young girls. Lawley concludes that generating more women IT graduates would benefit technology in general. "Based on what we know about psychology, the way women use tools is so very different than the way men use tools," she explains. "We're not going to have good tools unless we have people who understand the context in which the tools will be used." Click Here to View Full Article From ACM TechNews, July 9, 2003 "Tech Giants Try to Convince Girls It's Chic to Be a Geek" Associated Press (07/06/03); Konrad, Rachel Summer camps and programs run by the likes of IBM, Intel, and others aim to interest girls in science, engineering, and math in the hopes that they will pursue technical careers and reverse a growing shortfall in the male-dominated U.S. tech workforce. The Information Technology Association of America estimates that the percentage of women in the tech sector declined from 41 percent in 1996 to 34.9 percent in 2002, while research from IBM indicates that women accounted for around 47 percent of the U.S. workforce in 2000 but made up just 22 percent of computer science and engineering undergraduates. IBM's Excite program sponsors a Silicon-Valley based tech camp where young girls engage in technology-related activities with the assistance of female engineers; 30 cities around the world will host Excite camps this summer. Meanwhile, Intel's Geek Chic program pairs up third-grade girls with mentors for a few days at facilities near Portland, Ore., while Texas Instruments is sponsoring a Dallas-based camp where 50 girls are learning advanced placement physics this summer. However, Catalyst's Kara Helander is concerned that these camps do not encourage women to pursue senior positions in the technology industry. Furthermore, the United States' liberal arts-based educational system is thought to be responsible for the country's profound shortage of scientists, in comparison to Russia, China, and India's burgeoning scientific ranks. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/1980937 From ACM TechNews, June 27, 2003 "Girls Less Confident on Computers: Study" Globe and Mail (06/24/03); Akin, David Canadian high school girls are not as confident as boys when it comes to working on computers and the Internet; nor do they use them as often as boys, according to a Statistics Canada study co-authored by Dalhousie University's Victor Thiessen and Acadia University's Dianne Looker. Access is apparently not a problem--97% of the 25,000 high school students polled in the study reported that they have used a computer in the 12 months prior to the survey, and 90% said they had accessed the Internet. Using this data, the study's authors conclude that the digital divide is no longer marked by geographical constraints, but by differing attitudes toward the use of technology. Girls surveyed in the study generally felt that computer skills were not as important as other things, while boys valued computer expertise more. In addition, the study finds that "Female youths and those from families with low levels of parental education are less likely to have access to computers in their homes [and] they tend to spend less time on the computer and they tend to report lower levels of computer skills competency." Computer and Internet use is also more diverse among males, according to the report, which also indicates that boys are more likely to use assorted software programs on a daily basis. These trends will put boys in an advantageous position career-wise, because computer literacy and technology skills are becoming more desirable as qualifications for high-level, high-income jobs. Click Here to View Full Article From Edupage, June 11, 2003 Mentoring Program Supports Women In Science And Engineering MentorNet is a national nonprofit organization whose goal is to provide support in the form of e-mail mentoring for women studying science and engineering. The program matches female students with working professionals who give advice and encouragement. Many women feel uncomfortable in a field dominated by male students and faculty. Participants in the program--both students and mentors--say that e-mail mentoring is effective, despite the perception that it is impersonal. E-mail allows students and mentors in different time zones to communicate at their convenience. One mentor said, "[Y]ou don't have to drop what you are doing ... and I can take time to think about my answer." MentorNet was started in 1997 by Carol Muller, who, as associate engineering dean at Dartmouth College, was disturbed to see that women left science and engineering programs at twice the rate of men. San Jose Mercury News, 10 June 2003 http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/local/6053553.htm From ACM News, May 30, 2003 "Making It on Their Merits" Business Week (05/29/03); Black, Jane The U.S. high-tech sector is still predominantly male, but women have made significant progress in attaining prominence in tech companies thanks to a merit-driven corporate culture fostered by Silicon Valley. Up-and-coming women are filling the executive ranks, and even claiming top spots, in giants such as Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, Yahoo!, Intel, and eBay, to name a few. Because promotion chiefly depends on performance in younger industries such as technology, "you're more likely to see women and minorities in senior positions [in tech] than in old-line, entrenched industries such as insurance, banks, steel, or manufacturing," observes DP Parker & Associates CEO David Parker. Packet Design Chairman Judy Estrin says that women in sales or technology have defeated skepticism from co-workers and clients through know-how, preparation, and consistent delivery. Lucent CEO Patricia Russo insists that "Results matter--it's hard to argue with them." Another factor that has helped women rise to greater heights is federal mandates requiring organizations notorious for gender discrimination to eliminate such practices. Many female tech professionals privately feel that women who hold top positions should be more proactive, both in giving lower-echelon women a leg up and encouraging girls to pursue business careers in technology. However, the majority of female executives, believing performance should be prioritized over sex, are opposed to the idea. Nevertheless, the Information Technology Association reports that women accounted for 25.3 percent of IT professionals in 2002, an increase of just 0.3 percent since 1996; moreover, an October 2002 study from the Simmons College School of Management found that less than 10 percent of girls expect to follow a business career track. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM News, May 23, 2003 "The Computer World Could Use More IT Girls" Los Angeles Times (05/21/03); Margolis, Jane UCLA education researcher Jane Margolis writes that future social, economic, and political trends in the United States depend on the type of people attracted to computer technology and the values they carry. She observes that girls are sorely lacking in the technology sector, though as many females as males surf the Web and use instant messaging. Only one quarter of the 2002 IT workforce consisted of women, even though almost 50 percent of the U.S. workforce was female. Furthermore, girls account for approximately 20 percent of all computer science majors and just 17 percent of all high school students taking the Advanced Placement Computer Science exam. Margolis argues that the lack of a female contribution to computer technology design will reverberate throughout the nation's economic and social architecture, lock out women from educational and economic opportunities, and result in products that do not fulfill women's needs, an example being voice-recognition systems chiefly calibrated to males' distinct vocal nuances. She cites research proving that the prevailing view of computer science culture is being dictated by "a small substrata of [game-oriented] male students," while women are struggling to connect computing to wide-ranging areas, such as medicine and social issues. Computer science education in the schools comes up short in this regard. Margolis also believes that the gaming industry needs to renovate the products it markets, the majority of which offer ultraviolent male-oriented fare that present women as sex objects. Click Here to View Full Article From Knowledge@Emory, May 7 - June 3, 2003 Are Fewer Women Pursuing MBA Degrees? A recent survey of admission statistics for the top 20 business schools reveals that women are more likely to choose a career in medicine and law over one in business. So what’s keeping women from pursuing an MBA and a career in business? Experts at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School and the Forté Foundation, an alliance of educational institutions, businesses and non-profit groups, discuss the disparity. http://www.umsl.edu/~sauter/women/mba/index.html From ACM News, May 7, 2003 "Study: Working Women Face Technology Gender Gap" Reuters (05/05/03); Zabarenko, Deborah A technology gender gap is barring women from competing for high-paying positions, especially those that carry family-friendly benefits such as flexible schedules, telecommuting, and job sharing, according to a report the American Association of University Women Education Foundation released on Monday. The "Women at Work" study estimates that 41 percent of men are studying subjects that will prepare them for a career in science, engineering, or information technology, compared to just 28 percent of women; as a consequence, more men than women can take advantage of family-friendly benefits. Earlier research from the foundation demonstrates that women tend to start lagging behind men in their technology education as early as elementary school, mainly because courses are more male-oriented, according to foundation research director Elena Silva. She also observes that Caucasian and Asian American women have better chances of breaking into high-paying fields than African American, Latina, or Native American women. The report suggests that women and girls in underserved racial and ethnic groups should have more educational access, while awareness of a high-technology education's benefits should be elevated. Click Here to View Full Article "UMBC Event Encourages Girls to Excel in Science" Baltimore Sun (05/04/03); Barker, Jeff The University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMBC) yesterday hosted Computer Mania Day, an event intended to demonstrate how entertaining computer science can be for girls, as well as address the low enrollment of girls in IT studies. Former astronaut and keynote speaker Sally Ride noted that stereotypes that discourage girls from pursuing science still exist, and observed that "More girls than boys start to drift out of the pipeline in middle school." Ride was one of many role models invited to the event to illustrate that technology is not a field restricted to "geeks." Also attending was UMBC student Payal Aggarwal, the recipient of a scholarship from the Center for Women and Information Technology, which was set up in 1998 to encourage more women to pursue careers in technology. National Security Agency college relations manager Ken Acosta was also present to promote job opportunities for computer and electrical engineers, as well as work-study programs for students. Activities that visitors participated in included dismantling computers, inflating hot-air balloons with hair dryers, and electronically recording their fingerprints. The event drew 300 sixth- and seventh-grade girls. From ACM News, April 18, 2003 "Women Need Widescreen for Virtual Navigation" New Scientist (04/17/03); Marks, Paul Computer scientists from Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., research lab and Carnegie Mellon University told attendees at a Florida computer usability conference last week that men are better than women when it comes to navigating through virtual environments using typical computer displays and graphics software. This is related to men being generally faster than women in being able to mentally map out the environment and their spatial relation to it--a talent that extends to the real world, according to Microsoft researcher Mary Czerwinski. She and fellow researcher George Robertson, along with Carnegie Mellon's Desney Tan, ran a series of tests on volunteers to see if they could improve females' virtual navigation skills. The results indicated women can become just as adept as men with certain modifications, such as a larger screen to provide a wider field of view and smoother, more realistic animation. "You have to generate each image frame so the optical flow simulates accurately the experience of walking down, say, a hallway," Robertson explained. It is much less disorienting for women if the animation is not jerky, but many 3D software applications do not support smooth image rendering. Female architects, designers, trainee pilots, and video gamers are among those who could benefit from a modified virtual navigation system. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993628 From ACM News, April 9, 2003 "Afghan Women Hope Computer Will Bring New Dawn" Reuters (04/08/03); Brunnstrom, David The recent certification of 17 domestically-trained Afghans as computer networking specialists is a watershed for Afghanistan, a country that is a decades-long laggard in information technology, and whose recently-ousted Taliban government virtually eliminated all educational and professional opportunities for women. Under the aegis of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Cisco Systems set up a Cisco Networking Academy at Kabul University, and the first 17 graduates--six of them women--received their industry standard certificates on Tuesday. One female graduate, 23-year-old Rita Dorani, urged all Afghan women to familiarize themselves with computer technology, while men should not stand in their way. Although the Western-backed regime that replaced the Taliban is more permissive, Afghan women still remain rights-challenged in the largely conservative provinces; UNDP project director Mark LePage noted that the UN plans to bring the initiative to those provinces. UNDP's Deputy Director for Afghanistan Knut Ostby said that such programs offer opportunities for the nation to bring its IT infrastructure rapidly up to date, and the Cisco Networking Academy graduates will hopefully lead the rest of the country in becoming an established IT player. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM News, April 4, 2003 "Business Scene: Why Aren't More Women in Tech Fields?" Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (04/03/03); Czetli, Steven N. The technology job market is rife with opportunities, yet few women are taking advantage of them. This trend was the subject of a panel hosted by the Pittsburgh Technology Council last week. A scarcity of training was cited as a major hurdle, but personal priorities might also play a role--Maya Design CFO Robbin Steif suggested that women may be more averse to risk-taking than men, or find it too difficult to juggle work and family. The panel did not see any major differences of degree between the obstacles men and women face when pursuing tech careers. "I really think the minority issue is a bigger problem than the woman issue because there is such a lack of candidates," argued FreeMarkets CFO Joan Hooper, who noted that minority and female workers might have more advantages in major metropolitan areas. The panel's female members acknowledged that men and women differ in terms of business thinking, but this is not necessarily a detriment; Steif noted that women ought to "use their femininity" to offer fresh viewpoints to the company. "Women really do need to either adapt or change men's minds," she observed. The panel pointed out that women's affinity to technology could be affected by cultural factors, such as a family tradition of tech professionals. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03093/171152.stm "Microsoft Research Finds Women Take a Wider View" PRNewswire (04/03/03) Microsoft Research has found that women can navigate virtual environments 20 percent better when using optical flow cues built into a program's user interface; such visual clues provide continuous on-screen hints where things are located. Because these optical flow cues take up more screen space, the Microsoft researchers suggest setting up multiple monitors or large-screen displays. More importantly, software designers building 3D computer environments should fit them to larger displays that more easily accommodate optical flow cues. University of Washington professor Earl Hunt says previous attempts to bridge the performance gap focused on training, but the new research shows the difference can be made up through display characteristics. "It is now well-established that males do better than females in orientation tasks, especially in exploring virtual environments," he notes. Microsoft Research says Optical flow cues would be particularly useful in training, graphic design, gaming, and architectural programs. Microsoft Usability Labs engineers as well as Microsoft researchers will present papers and host and participant in panels at the ACM's CHI 2003 conference, which runs from April 5-10 in Fort Lauderdale, FL. http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030403/sfth015a_1.html From ACM News, May 2, 2003 "Group Offers Help for Women in the Tech Sector" TechRepublic (04/28/03); Bell, Tina Jenkins The Association for Women in Computing (AWC) is a professional group created to give women a leg up in the technology sector. The organization currently consists of 2,000 members and about 20 active chapters throughout 13 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The association is chiefly oriented toward U.S.-based female employees, but is also open to women in other countries as well as men. Technology consultant and AWC national president Suford Lewis praises the organization for fostering an informal atmosphere where women can be open and honest. AWC's primary goals are to help technology-savvy women communicate and network, provide them with a foundation for entry and advancement, and offer them opportunities for professional development. Communication and networking opportunities are presented at monthly chapter meetings and national board meetings, as well as national and local chapter Web sites that promote current events and projects. AWC offers scholarships and initiatives to fuel an interest in technology among girls, and hosts events at the national and chapter levels that honor women who make significant contributions and achievements in the tech field. Both employed and unemployed members can improve their professional development through AWC seminars designed to keep them abreast of corporate market and industry happenings, as well as offer them continuing education units for certifications or employment-based prerequisites. Click Here to View Full Article Minority Women Perceive IT as Way to Promised Land: See article From ACM News, April 21, 2003 "Minority Women Perceive IT as Way to Promised Land" EurekAlert (04/16/03) Penn State researcher Dr. Lynette Kvasny says women in differing income brackets have markedly disparate views of IT: Minority women in low-income communities believe IT can be a ticket to upward mobility, while middle-class, predominantly white women think IT has few advancement options, indicating that IT and gender studies should consider women to be a heterogeneous group rather than generalized and homogenous. Kvasny says, "Populations of women have different and competing perceptions about technology's potential impact on their life experiences." Kvasny's conclusions are based on interviews with African American women participating in a computer-training course two years ago, and were presented at ACM's "Freedom in Philadelphia: Leveraging Differences and Diversity in the IT Workforce" conference on April 12. Kvasny notes that IT skills could do more for minority women than allow them to earn higher salaries; they could also allow them to focus on their personal as well as community assets in order to improve their lot. They could, for instance, enable them to lobby for neighborhood bus stops, take legal action against delinquent landlords, or learn how to file for child support. In addition, minority women in Kvasny's study think they would be able to establish deeper relationships with their computer-savvy children through their IT training. Kvasny says that minority women view IT as a "promised land" that can allow them to overcome societal and economic hurdles. Click Here to View Full Article From Edupage, April 14, 2003 COMPUTER COURSES AT AFGHANISTAN UNIVERSITY Kabul University in Afghanistan will soon offer computer-networking courses, including some classes with only female students. Afghanistan was long cut off from the technological developments happening in other parts of the world, and, under Taliban rule, women were denied education altogether. According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), almost no one in Afghanistan is able to handle computers due to the country's 20 years of relative isolation. A statement from the UNDP said, "The new academy fills a critical void for women and men alike in Afghanistan." Associated Press, 13 April 2003 http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/852842p-5976562c.html From ACM News, April 14, 2003 "Government Urged to Bridge Skills Gap" BBC News (04/09/03) Karen Price, CEO of e-skills UK, has called on the U.K. government to do more to improve the level of computer skills taught in schools. Price made an appeal to Education Secretary Charles Clarke during an event in which e-skills UK, the government-aided organization responsible for bridging the IT skills gap in the United Kingdom, received a five-year license to be the Sector Skills Council for IT, Telecoms, and Contact Centers. "In the U.K., less than three-quarters of the workforce possess the necessary IT skills to perform their job; it's simply not good enough," Price said of the potential impact of a tech skills gap on the U.K. GDP. In addition to putting the skills gap at the top of his agenda, Price urged Clarke to support Computer Clubs for Girls, which has become popular among young girls, and embrace the idea of giving every undergraduate a basic understanding of technology. Computer Clubs for Girls promote technology in a way most girls can accept readily, such as by designing Web sites dedicated to their favorite pop idols. Price also favors creating an e-skills passport for the United Kingdom's 21 million tech workers, who would gain credits as they pursue further IT training. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2929257.stm From ACM News, April 9, 2003 "Afghan Women Hope Computer Will Bring New Dawn" Reuters (04/08/03); Brunnstrom, David The recent certification of 17 domestically-trained Afghans as computer networking specialists is a watershed for Afghanistan, a country that is a decades-long laggard in information technology, and whose recently-ousted Taliban government virtually eliminated all educational and professional opportunities for women. Under the aegis of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Cisco Systems set up a Cisco Networking Academy at Kabul University, and the first 17 graduates--six of them women--received their industry standard certificates on Tuesday. One female graduate, 23-year-old Rita Dorani, urged all Afghan women to familiarize themselves with computer technology, while men should not stand in their way. Although the Western-backed regime that replaced the Taliban is more permissive, Afghan women still remain rights-challenged in the largely conservative provinces; UNDP project director Mark LePage noted that the UN plans to bring the initiative to those provinces. UNDP's Deputy Director for Afghanistan Knut Ostby said that such programs offer opportunities for the nation to bring its IT infrastructure rapidly up to date, and the Cisco Networking Academy graduates will hopefully lead the rest of the country in becoming an established IT player. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM News, April 4, 2003 "Business Scene: Why Aren't More Women in Tech Fields?" Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (04/03/03); Czetli, Steven N. The technology job market is rife with opportunities, yet few women are taking advantage of them. This trend was the subject of a panel hosted by the Pittsburgh Technology Council last week. A scarcity of training was cited as a major hurdle, but personal priorities might also play a role--Maya Design CFO Robbin Steif suggested that women may be more averse to risk-taking than men, or find it too difficult to juggle work and family. The panel did not see any major differences of degree between the obstacles men and women face when pursuing tech careers. "I really think the minority issue is a bigger problem than the woman issue because there is such a lack of candidates," argued FreeMarkets CFO Joan Hooper, who noted that minority and female workers might have more advantages in major metropolitan areas. The panel's female members acknowledged that men and women differ in terms of business thinking, but this is not necessarily a detriment; Steif noted that women ought to "use their femininity" to offer fresh viewpoints to the company. "Women really do need to either adapt or change men's minds," she observed. The panel pointed out that women's affinity to technology could be affected by cultural factors, such as a family tradition of tech professionals. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03093/171152.stm "Microsoft Research Finds Women Take a Wider View" PRNewswire (04/03/03) Microsoft Research has found that women can navigate virtual environments 20 percent better when using optical flow cues built into a program's user interface; such visual clues provide continuous on-screen hints where things are located. Because these optical flow cues take up more screen space, the Microsoft researchers suggest setting up multiple monitors or large-screen displays. More importantly, software designers building 3D computer environments should fit them to larger displays that more easily accommodate optical flow cues. University of Washington professor Earl Hunt says previous attempts to bridge the performance gap focused on training, but the new research shows the difference can be made up through display characteristics. "It is now well-established that males do better than females in orientation tasks, especially in exploring virtual environments," he notes. Microsoft Research says Optical flow cues would be particularly useful in training, graphic design, gaming, and architectural programs. Microsoft Usability Labs engineers as well as Microsoft researchers will present papers and host and participant in panels at the ACM's CHI 2003 conference, which runs from April 5-10 in Fort Lauderdale, FL. http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030403/sfth015a_1.html From ACM News, March 21, 2003 "Where Girls and Tech Make a Match" Washington Post (03/20/03) P. E1; McCarthy, Ellen Women account for half of the current workforce, yet only 20 percent of technology professionals; in addition, College Board records indicate that the number of female students who took the Advanced Placement exams in computer science fell from 17 percent in 1997 to 14 percent in 2002. Believing that academic efforts are failing to attract more students, several Washington, D.C., organizations want to bring more women into the fold through initiatives such as last week's meeting of the Washington branch of Women in Technology, a networking event designed to introduce girls to female tech professionals. Speakers at the conference were honest and did not candy-coat the struggle they faced to become successful. One speaker, TranTech CEO TiTi McNeill, stressed that hard work can help girls overcome any impediment. Other women-centric initiatives in the D.C. area include the nonprofit Empower Girls, where girls from age 8 and up can participate in highly social computer clubs that aim to disband the geeky, antisocial image most girls associate with tech careers. Meanwhile, the Goddard Space Flight Center's Summer Institute in Science, Engineering, and Research program, currently in its fifth year, pairs up female eighth-graders with mentors for a free five-day session in which participants are exposed to careers in tech fields. Technettes is a Falls Church, Md.-based after-school club organized by Phyllis Gottdiener that emphasizes technology, and whose members outline their own goals and mentor each other. Gottdiener says younger participants are being inspired by their mentors to take advanced computer courses and consider college tech programs. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57286-2003Mar19.html "Easing a Skills' Shortage" Guardian Unlimited (UK) (03/13/03); Swain, Ann Ann Swain, CEO of the UK-based Association of Technology Staffing Companies, predicts the United Kingdom will face a shortage of skilled IT professionals when the global economy rebounds. She believes the problem is complicated by the low number of women in the IT field, who currently make up only a fifth of the UK's IT workers. Moreover, less than 10 percent of the UK's senior programmers are female, compared to about a third in the United States. Another problem faced by the IT field is its image--women feel that IT jobs are too complex and inflexible, and that IT workers are geeks. But Swain says the IT field has expanded to include a wide variety of jobs beyond programming, and all jobs are ultimately people-focused. UK's secretary for the department of trade and industry Patricia Hewitt recently announced a government initiative for boosting the number of women in science, engineering, and technology (SET) jobs, geared toward female students. The industry also needs to be more accommodating to different needs, possibly through IT contract work, suggests Swain. She also urges the government to offer tax breaks to help potential IT contractors get the training they need to acquire up-to-date skills. http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,912607,00.html From ACM News, January 8, 2003 "IT Gender Gap Widening" Datamation (01/06/03); Robb, Drew Women have been making gradual gains in most professions that were traditionally male-dominated, but information technology appears to be an exception--for instance, the number of computer science degrees awarded to women declined from 35.8 percent to 28.4 percent between 1984 and 1996. The American Association of University Women (AAUW) report "Tech-Savvy: Educating Girls in the New Computer Age" concludes that many girls believe a popular misconception that IT workers lead "solitary, antisocial" lives. Girls' interest in technology should be nurtured in the classroom, according to Pamela Haag of the AAUW's Educational Foundation Commission on Technology, Gender, and Teacher Education. There are a number of initiatives designed to foster more female professionals in IT as well as other sciences, including a joint program between NASA and the Labor Department's Women's Bureau to host conferences and events that promote technology professions; a pair of TV public service announcements directed at girls and minorities produced by Women in Film, with additional funding provided by the Commerce Department and the National Association of Manufacturers; and the Women in NASA Web site, which profiles hundreds of female employees in order to show visitors that women with technology backgrounds are not isolated or antisocial. Mentoring also plays an important role in encouraging girls to pursue IT careers. Online projects such as MentorNet and the Rochester Institute of Technology's EDGE are specifically geared toward girls and young women. In addition, women who already work in the IT field can get support though organizations such as the Association for Computing Machinery's Committee on Women in Computing (http://www.acm.org/women/). http://www.itmanagement.earthweb.com/career/article.php/1564501 "Tech Doctorates Decline 7 Percent" CNet (01/06/03); Frauenheim, Ed The number of science and engineering doctorate degrees awarded in the United States slipped 7 percent between 1998 and 2001, according to a National Science Foundation (NSF) survey conducted by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center; for the first time in nine years, the total number of Ph.D.s awarded dropped below 41,000. Intel CTO Pat Gelsinger finds these figures troubling, and warns that a lack of sufficient Ph.D.s could lead to a shortage of high-tech professionals and threaten the long-term competitiveness of the United States. Gelsinger says that China, India, Russia, and other countries are producing greater numbers of graduating Ph.D.s, while at the same time the U.S. government is tightening its research and development budget. Furthermore, he claims that U.S. graduate programs in science and engineering are being misrepresented by visa laws that lure foreign students to the United States to pursue masters degrees and Ph.D.s. However, University of California at Davis computer science professor Norman Matloff does not agree with technology industry leaders that the U.S. educational system is to blame for the drop-off in tech workers: He writes, for example, that the low salaries allotted to Ph.D.s discourages American students. On the plus side, the NSF survey finds that enrollments in science and engineering graduate programs increased in 1999 and 2000, and there were more doctorates awarded to female and African-American graduates between 1998 and 2001. http://news.com.com/2100-1001-979385.html From ACM News, March 17, 2003 "Lilith Stirs Interest in Technology Among Girls" News@UW-Madison (03/14/03); Konicek, Kathy The Lilith Computer Group is a local program in Madison, Wisconsin, that is working to encourage females to study information technology. Women hold just 20 percent of IT jobs, and groups such as Lilith have formed in an effort to get more females to seek careers in computers. Lilith targets girls in middle school, forming 10 clubs around Madison where girls meet after school once a week to work with editing digital video, creating logos with design software, and other computer activities. The group is sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, community groups, local schools, and foundations. UW-Madison's Kathy Konicek, who works part time as a Lilith Club coordinator, says, "About 86 percent of the kids who sign up come to club meetings regularly. Our retention rate is good." Lilith is developing a mentoring program using women mostly from the tech community to keep club members interested in technology once they leave middle school. http://www.news.wisc.edu/view.html?get=8412 From ACM News, February 19, 2003 "Diversity in the High-Tech Workplace" SiliconValley.com (02/14/03); Fortt, John; Davis, Jack The workforces of the 10 highest-grossing high-tech companies in Silicon Valley have grown in diversity, but the emphasis is on Asians rather than other minorities, while executive levels remain predominantly white. About one in three jobs created between 1996 and 2000 were filled by Asian employees, but most Asians were concentrated in the technical and engineering fields rather than retail and management. This growth is attributed to the fact that Asian countries churn out almost three times as many science and engineering graduates as the United States annually, according to the National Science Foundation; and nearly 8 percent of science and engineering degrees from U.S. universities are awarded to Asians. Meanwhile, about 10 percent of the workforce in 2000 was either black or Latino, while women made up less than a third of the workforce by the time the most recent tech boom ended. Workers at major Silicon Valley companies often use their experience to launch startups, but even the CEOs of these startups are mainly white, notes Intel's Sriram Viswanathan. Tech leaders say the low percentage of Asian executives is due to a lack of communication and language skills, as well as personal contacts. Clarinet Systems President Wen Chang adds that Asian children will be more inclined to seek careers as sales and marketing associates by exposing them to successful role models. Kathleen Allen, who teaches entrepreneurship at the University of Southern California, notes that about one-third of her current class is made up of Asian engineering graduates. Among Asian countries, China and India specialize in producing engineers, but Vietnam, the Philippines, and other Southeast Asian nations tend to produce professionals that migrate to medicine or other fields. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/local/5184782.htm From ACM News, February 5, 2003 "Women in IT (For a While)" ZDNet Australia (01/30/03); Oliver, Jane Last week's "Women in IT: Engaging and retaining for success" conference highlighted the problem of employee retention, which was raised by keynote speaker Patricia Hewitt, Australia's secretary of state for trade and industry. "[Women are] coming in but they're not staying," she lamented, and attributed this trend to several factors, notably the decision to start families and discouragement upon hitting the glass ceiling. Jane Lodge of Midlands Deloitte and Touche cited a lack of ambition as the reason many talented women are leaving IT. Solutions Hewitt suggested included the reorganization of work time, such as shortening the work week to four days. She pointed to the European initiative of instituting such practices, adding that there has been no loss in productivity or staff turnover as a result. In April, British employees will be able to propose an amended work schedule to their employers, who can only reject it for business reasons. Also speaking at the conference was Elaine Clark, group manager for Chelsea FC, who recommended that prospective female IT workers should have a clear idea of what they want to do, and then work out a plan to achieve their goals. Meanwhile, conference attendee Jane Oliver writes that the key to recruiting and retaining more female IT workers should involve the elimination of certain industry practices she terms misogynistic. "Information Highway Needs Women Drivers" Maryland Daily Record--TechLink (01/03) P. 5; McCausland, Christianna The belief that girls are more inclined to social interaction and that to have an interest in computers makes one a geek is curbing girls' interest in technology, says Eileen Ellsworth, co-chairwoman of Girls in Technology (GIT). "These are stereotypes we need to disabuse girls of by making computers social and interesting to them," says Ellsworth, an attorney who also provides legal counsel to a software company. National studies about the societal and academic pressures girls face when they enter middle school support Ellsworth's belief that elementary school is the time to cultivate an interest in technology among girls. In addition to her involvement with the outreach committee GIT, which tries to get more girls interested in technology by providing speakers, mentors, and scholarships, Ellsworth is also executive director of Empower Girls, an organization designed to serve as a safe-haven for girls as they explore computers and technology. Empower Girls gives girls an opportunity to take computers apart, and learn how to use software programs. Girls will need to become more comfortable using computers and technology if they plan on having rewarding careers in the future, adds Women in Technology board member Paula Jagemann. Technology impacts every facet of contemporary life, and will continue to create exciting career opportunities in the years to come, she says. From ACM News, January 27, 2003 "Little Progress on Women in IT" VNUNet (01/24/03); Fielding, Rachel A study conducted by the U.K.-based Women in IT Champions Group has found that government efforts to attract more women into the IT workforce have made little progress. The report concludes that though 36 percent of new hires in first quarter 2002 were female, they represented 46 percent of all leavers. Some women are quitting their careers to focus on family life, but older women are leaving as well. Speaking at the Women in IT conference, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Patricia Hewitt declared that business, government, and industry must work together to halt the erosion of the female IT sector. Rebecca George of IBM says the government should devote more research into the reasons women leave their careers, adding that the assumption that the primary reason for quitting was an imbalance between work and home life was "naive." "[W]e think that women are leaving because of corporate cultural issues and because they want to work in an environment where they have more control," she explains. Meanwhile, Oracle human resources director Richard Lowther admits a plan to bring graduates from non-IT disciplines into IT positions was not very successful. http://nl2.vnunet.com/News/1138250 From ACM News, January 24, 2003 "Women Spurning Tech Jobs" BBC News (01/23/03); Wakefield, Jane The retention of women in IT jobs is equally important to getting young girls interested in IT careers, said speakers at the third annual Women in Information Technology conference in London. Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt estimated that more then one-third of new tech employees are female, but said they eventually quit their profession to concentrate on family life or other interests. This attrition must be stopped if the U.K. female tech workforce is to achieve an equitable level with the male workforce, she insisted. Hewitt explained that many women believe tech jobs cannot balance demands of work and family, and they must be given "the confidence to challenge a workaholic culture." Speakers from major tech companies delivered the sobering news that women account for fewer than 20 percent of their management staff. Meanwhile, a new female technology recruit makes 3,000 pounds less than her male counterpart, on average. More promising was the success of the Computer Clubs for Girls project, which is supported by 24 schools and may soon be established throughout the United Kingdom. "Girls are more independent and more creative than in traditional information technology lessons," observed Katy Baker of the Kendrick School for Girls. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2687247.stm From ACM News, January 11, 2003 "Where the Girls Aren't" New York Times--Education Life (01/12/03) P. 35; Stabiner, Karen Opinions are divided as to why computer programming is unpopular among girls: One camp subscribes to the theory that girls are socially conditioned to avoid computer science, while another reasons that they are naturally disinclined toward the field. "The wanting to know how things work, that's often what boys want to know," observes Hope Chafiian, director of technology and curriculum at Spence. Westover School principal Ann Pollina estimates that women account for fewer than one-third of all computer and information science bachelor's degrees, and just 18 percent of advanced degrees; the ratio of male computer programmers to female programmers in industry is four to one. Girls' reluctance to study programming could threaten the U.S. domination of the programming industry, according to Kurt Schleunes of the Marlborough School in Los Angeles. He believes that a lot of women are put off by the Advanced Placement curriculum, and suggests that it be revamped so that it is more girl-friendly--such revisions include a de-emphasis on mathematics and a greater concentration on practical applications. Pollina thinks that the computer curriculum must undergo a similar user-friendly retooling, and also believes the number of female computer science graduates could improve if their adult peers change their expectations. Yale freshman Kaitlyn Trigger, who studied under Schleunes, says that girls must learn programming if they are to have a successful technology career. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/edlife/12STABINE.html (Access to this site is free; however, first-time visitors must register.) From "Where the Girls Aren't," New York Times, January 12, 2003. Anyone who has ever tried to pry a girl offline knows that girls like computers. They just don't understand how they work. Computer science, the mathematics-based study of programming, is so unpopular among girls that even the most rigorous girls' schools rarely find enough students to fill a class. Tech-minded teachers worry that programming is to this generation what math was to their mothers -- a boys' club preventing girls from getting a foothold in the technological world. Read the remainder of the article (first time users will need to register, although access is free) From The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 11, 2002 "Number of Ph.D.'s Awarded in U.S. Declines, but American Women Gain in Share of U.S. Total," By Piper Fogg The number of doctorates awarded by American research universities in 2001 fell to a level not seen since 1993, according to a new study. After having reached an all-time high of 42,654 in 1998, the number of doctorates given out by institutions in the United States fell to 40,744 last year, a decline of 4.5 percent. The total represented a 1.4 percent decline from the 41,340 doctorates awarded in 2000. The dip can be explained by a large decrease in doctorates awarded in science and engineering disciplines, which fell by 6.5 percent since 1998. The number in fields outside science and engineering dropped by only 0.9 percent over that period. The fact that the trend "is affecting almost every single science and engineering field is a sign that it's a systematic decline," said Susan T. Hill, director of the doctorate-data project at the National Science Foundation, one of six federal agencies that sponsors the annual Survey of Earned Doctorates. The survey is produced each year by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. The latest report of the survey's findings, "Doctorate Recipients From United States Universities: Summary Report 2001," has not been published yet, but data tables are available now at the research center's Web site. (The tables can be viewed using Adobe Acrobat Reader, available free.) The systematic decline in science and engineering may indicate that either institutions or potential doctoral candidates responded to what some viewed as an oversupply of doctorates in the job market in the mid-1990s. "I think the market has eased up," said Ms. Hill. "Maybe we're seeing a reflection of that earlier oversaturation." The irony is that the declines have not been concentrated in the humanities, where it has become increasingly difficult to find jobs. Of the doctorates awarded in 2001, 22,769 went to men and 17,901 to women. The total for men has declined steadily for the last five years. The number of doctorates earned by women rose in 2000, but dropped in 2001 by 1.1 percent. Among women who earned a doctorate in 2001 and were American citizens, however, the report held some good news. While the total number of that group declined, women made up 49.5 percent of U.S. citizens who earned doctorates, an increase of one-10th of a percentage point over their share of the 2000 total. "That's very encouraging," said Peter D. Syverson, vice president for research and information services at the Council of Graduate Schools. "This is a figure that has changed measurably over the past 20 years, and that's a really remarkable change." Mr. Syverson noted that there is still a need to attract more women to the sciences. That women have historically not enjoyed a high representation in the sciences could partly explain why the overall number of science doctorates is falling, said Jody Nyquist, associate dean of the graduate school at the University of Washington at Seattle and head of a project called Re-Envisioning the Ph.D. "We need to attract women and people of color to the fields of science and engineering," Ms. Nyquist said. "Students are becoming more sophisticated in looking at what it takes to get a doctorate," she added. Women with families can be turned off by the time commitment, she said, and students in general are looking at the opportunity costs and opting to go to law school and business school rather than graduate school. Mr. Syverson said he is also pleased to see that the number of years it takes graduate students to get their doctorates has not increased. The median number of years from bachelor's degree to doctorate was 10 years, while students registered an average of seven and a half years as a graduate student. "We were extraordinarily concerned that every year we'd see this elongation in the time it took for students to get their degrees," Mr. Syverson said. He credits better mentor programs and formal annual meetings with mentors at graduate programs that encourage students to make good progress. "Graduate students are becoming determined to make this a more time-sensitive process." A high number of graduate students registered clear plans for what they would do after finishing their education. At 73.6 percent, said Mr. Syverson, that number is the highest since 1989. He suggests that is because of a general recognition that scholars can have a successful career outside academe. "That's a sea change in the thinking of faculty members and students," he said. The number of doctorates earned by black U.S. citizens dropped by 1.6 percent in 2001, to 1,604 from 1,630 in 2000. Those earned by Hispanic U.S. citizens dropped by 5.1 percent, to 1,119 from 1,179. Those earned by American Indian U.S. citizens dropped by 2.9 percent, to 164 from 169. Those earned by Asian U.S. citizens rose by 1.5 percent, to 1,382, from 1,362. In addition to the science foundation, the survey is paid for by the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Education, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Free copies of "Doctorate Recipients From United States Universities: Summary Report 2001," are expected to be available in December from the National Opinion Research Center, Doctorate Data Project, 1155 East 60th St., Chicago, Ill. 60637. From ACM News, November 8, 2002 "Valley Execs, Politicians Launch Women's Networking Group" SiliconValley.com (11/07/02); Ostrom, Mary Anne The West Coast chapter of the Women's High-Tech Coalition was inaugurated Thursday at a gathering of top female Silicon Valley technology executives such as Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and Autodesk CEO Carol Bartz, as well as such California politicians as Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose). Organizers say the coalition will focus on building positive relationships between business and political leaders, rather than making political contributions or pushing specific issues. The purpose of the group is to act as a platform for rising female valley executive stars, and give the technology industry's agenda more weight in Washington. "We aren't always going to agree, but we can be supportive of helping women build technology careers," declared Lofgren. Among the initiatives the coalition is pursuing is the education of female legislators on technology-oriented issues, such as digital rights and broadband. Another effort involves the promotion of Girls for a Change, a nonprofit organization that seeks to have female business leaders act as mentors for middle- and high-school girls. "I think they want to show they can crack 'the old boys network' a bit," noted Democratic fundraiser Wade Randlett, who added that the group's formation comes at a fortuitous time. Politicians are having a harder time collecting high-tech campaign donations because of the economic slump, while increasing fundraising depends more and more on boosting interest in public policy. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/4470808.htm From WITI Strategist, November 7, 2002. The Glass Ceiling in the Executive Suite A study by Annenberg Public Policy Center- University of Pennsylvania September 2002 A study released by Annenberg Public Policy Center last month examining 57 of the largest companies in entertainment, telecommunications and cable, publishing and e-companies, as well as individual operating units within those companies, found an inadequate number of women in top-level leadership positions. Among the companies included in the study were: Walt Disney, General Electric, Fox Entertainment Group, AOL Time Warner, USA Networks, AT&T, Verizon Communications, SBC Communications, Sprint, Nextel, New York Times, Washington Post, McGraw-Hill, Dow Jones, Yahoo, Charles Schwab, Fox News Channel, CBS News and CNN. Women on average comprise 10% of the top-management positions at these companies. At AOL Time Warner, only 2 of the 32 executives are women (6%) and at 10 companies under the corporate umbrella of Fox Entertainment Group, only 21 of the top 120 executives are women (18%). To correct these inequities, Susan Ness, former commissioner of the FCC and Director of Information and Society at the Annenberg Center, recommends corporations provide more training and mentoring to women to help guide their careers, do internal reviews for the hiring and retention of women at all levels, and have succession planning for top positions that includes outreach to women. "It seems unseemly to me that a business that delivers its products to an equal number of women and men does not have more women in their leadership," states, John Challenger, President of Challenger, Fray and Christmas, Inc., a Chicago-based international outplacement firm. "That will need to change." "Corporate boards need to have representatives that look like what America looks like, and that includes women and minorities," Neese says. "Otherwise, they will really miss the boat with their customers, particularly in the communications field." For the complete study and statistics of women in executive roles for Communication companies see http://www.appcpenn.org/press/glass-ceiling-2002-report.pdf From ACM News, November 4, 2002 "Professor's Fame Draws Minority Students to Science, Tech" EE Times Online (10/30/02); Quan, Margaret Arizona State University electrical engineering professor Armando A. Rodriguez has drawn upon his experience as an underprivileged youth and the support he received from mentors during his education to organize a mentoring program of his own, Mosart Fame (Modeling, Simulation, Animation and Real-time control of Flexible Autonomous Machines Operating in an Uncertain Environment). An alumnus of New York Polytechnic Institute and MIT, Rodriguez has earned a Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Math, and Engineering for Mosart Fame, which receives financial support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Intel, Microsoft, and Lockheed Martin, among others. His program offers scholarships and mentors to minority and female graduates who opt to pursue multidisciplinary electromechanical research in his laboratory, and thus far it has apportioned 130 $1,000 grants. The NSF reports that underrepresented minorities accounted for only 8.8 percent of U.S. science and engineering master's degree recipients in 2000. Rodriguez says that corporate scholarships designed to increase the ranks of minority science and tech professionals are rare, and are critical to the security of the United States. The AT&T and Lucent Technologies Cooperative Research Fellowship Programs are two initiatives that have reportedly granted almost 500 fellowships to minority and female grad students in science and engineering since 1972. Eight annual fellowship recipients are selected in each program to receive money for tuition, books, fees, summer studies, living expenses, and conference attendance support for six years, while other students get $2,000 stipends. http://www.theworkcircuit.com/story/OEG20021030S0038 From ACM News, October 28, 2002 "European IT Skills Progress Stalling" VNUNet (10/28/02); Fielding, Rachel Despite a wealth of initiatives designed to help give Europe a superior knowledge-based economy within eight years, European commissioners such as Anna Diamantopoulou are concerned that there has been little progress in the push to remedy IT skills shortages. She told delegates at last week's eSkills summit that "Access to new technologies may be growing in Europe but if we look behind the figures we see that the spread has been far from even and that huge gaps persist." Diamantopoulou explained that Europeans that earn high incomes are much more likely than low-income earners to have Web access, while only one in three workers has been trained on digital technology. She said the IT shortage cannot be fixed just by bringing in young, fresh talent; companies must provide their existing staffs with the technology, training, and motivation necessary to further their IT skills. In addition, Diamantopoulou warned that there are not enough women in IT, and urged that companies institute gender policies to rectify this situation. She also noted that IT skills alone do not ensure success--they must be supplemented with teamwork skills, self-management and communication skills, and cognitive and interpersonal skills. Meanwhile, Enterprise and Information Society commissioner Erkki Liikanen cautioned that some member states were in danger of losing focus because of the economic slump and a drop-off in IT recruitment. "IT remains a huge opportunity but the case needs to be made convincingly," he explained. http://nl2.vnunet.com/News/1136310 "Industry Attacks IT Tuition" Times Higher Education Supplement (10/18/02) No. 1560, P. 4; Leon, Pat Only a fifth of computer science graduates in the United Kingdom work in the information technology sector despite a current shortage, says a new report from e-skills UK. Of the 27,648 students in 1998 who began their studies in computer science, computer systems engineering, software engineering, and artificial intelligence, only 4,962 entered the IT field three years later after earning degrees, according to e-skills Regional Gap-UK. The sector is often criticized for its failure to attract women, demanding schedules, and job instability. "It's a huge loss," says e-skills UK researcher Andrew Henry-Price. E-skills UK COO Terry Watts adds that universities often fail to keep abreast of the changing technology and infrastructure. Furthermore, as IT becomes more ubiquitous, the distinctiveness of IT professionals is blurring, he says. E-skills UK, which seeks to boost the IT sector through collaboration between employers and the government, recently launched four projects to help IT education providers. They include developing an IT Web portal for higher education and establishing a graduate apprenticeship program. From ACM News, October 18, 2002 "Clubs Foster Computer Skills for Young Girls" Potomac Tech Journal (10/14/02) Vol. 3, No. 41, P. 6; Anderson, Tania Former lawyer Eileen Ellsworth decided to create a program to teach computer skills to middle-school girls after seeing national statistics on female students' lack of interest in technology. Also contributing to her decision was the fact that her son has a fondness for computers while her daughter considers them to be utilitarian and less interesting. In Fairfax County, Va., boys accounted for 70 percent and girls composed 30 percent of a seventh grade course in Inventions/Innovations in the 2001 school year, while an eighth grade course in Technology Systems had a female student portion of 24 percent. Meanwhile, high school professional and technical studies courses in basic engineering and communications systems had male student percentages of 90 percent and 94 percent, respectively. Ellsworth organized after-school technology clubs for girls in fourth and fifth grade; four Fairfax County public schools participate in the program and provide computer labs for club activities. Club members are taught computer skills in a fun way appropriate to their ages: For example, girls use Microsoft PowerPoint in one session to design a club logo, and the design they elect is printed on t-shirts. Other activities include Internet scavenger hunts, creating a newsletter in Microsoft Word, disassembling a computer and studying its inner workings, and writing their names in ASCII binary code and fashioning necklaces from them. The clubs meet once a week for 10 weeks, with about 30 girls enrolled in each. http://www.potomactechjournal.com/displayarticledetail.asp?art_id=60533 From Business News Update: Middle school girls destroy computers while learning. From ACM News, October 4, 2002 "Where the Girls Aren't" Raleigh News & Observer Online (10/02/02); Dyrness, Christina For over 10 years, educators have tried to get girls interested in pursuing computers, math, and science as a course of study and a possible career using a broad range of programs, and now researchers at North Carolina State University are studying whether such programs have had any noticeable effect. Their project involves following the progress of middle-school girls who participate in the "Girls on Track" summer day-camp program, and they have received $500,000 from the National Science Foundation to continue the initiative. The money will help them see if the participants continue to flourish in math, technology, and science through high school and early college. College is particularly critical, since many female computer science and engineering majors drop out at that point. It is estimated that women account for less than 28 percent of U.S. computer science college graduates and less than 20 percent of the technical workforce, and North Carolina State computer science professor Mladen Vouk believes more women choosing technology-oriented careers would boost the nation's edge in terms of international competition. Vouk says, "The country would be better off in the sense of not having to import work from overseas or outsourcing work overseas." Sarah Berenson, director of North Carolina State's Math and Science Research and Development Center, adds that women who do not study math and science could restrict themselves from attaining better or higher-paid jobs. Although recent statistics indicate that more women are slowly entering the technical workforce, the real trick is changing the image of science, math, and technology as male-dominated areas. http://www.tcpalm.com/tcp/living/article/0,1651,TCP_1043_1453167,00.html From ACM News, September 23, 2002 "Attracting Women" HP World (09/02) Vol. 5, No. 9, P. 22; Shor, Susan B. Executive director of university relations for Hewlett-Packard Wayne Johnson insists that industry must lead the charge to bring more women into IT by encouraging them to stick with science and engineering courses and share their technology ideas with their peers. To this end, HP has given the Institute for Women in Technology (IWT) a new home at HP Labs as well as equipment. IWT was established to increase the number of female technology graduates as well as give non-technical women a voice in technology development, and executive director Sara Hart comments that the dominance of men and male viewpoints in the IT sector is dictating product development. Leaving out the opinions of everyday women leads to technology that is useless to many consumers, and getting engineers to understand this trend is one of the goals of IWT. Activities that IWT sponsors include the Virtual Development Center, which brings engineering students and non-technical women together for brainstorming sessions that aim to outline a roadmap for future technologies. Meanwhile, the biannual Senior Women's Summit brings female leaders together to discuss how society can be affected by computing. Other organizations that IWT has collaborated with include the Center for American Women and Politics, the National Center for Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, and the Girl Scouts' Girls in Math, Science, and Technology Initiative. From ACM News, September 20, 2002 "Government Program to Get Women Back to IT" silicon.com (09/16/02); Hayday, Graham As part of the UK government's Teaching Company Scheme (TCS), 10 women will be placed in positions involving science, engineering, and technology (SET) to encourage other women to return to those industries. Coventry University will manage the project while funding will be provided by the government's Promoting SET for Women Unit. TCS says the 750,000-pound pilot project will produce case studies from which other firms can learn. "This regional pilot will improve representation [and] showcase the positive impact women returners can have," says Coventry University Enterprises' John Latham. In 2000, there were 290,000 working-age women with SET degrees, up from 240,000 in 1992, according to the government's Promoting SET for Women Unit. However, the number of females with SET degrees working in SET occupations has remained constant at about 25 percent since 1992; for men, the figure is 40 percent. It is estimated that the United Kingdom has a pool of some 50,000 potential women returners in SET fields. http://uk.news.yahoo.com/020916/152/d9pey.html From ACM News, September 20, 2002 "Does IT Favor Men?" Enterprise Systems (09/02) Vol. 17, No. 9, P. 56; Doty, Nick A recent Techies.com survey of 2,067 IT professionals in the United States shows that, although women are being promoted to managerial positions more often, they still do not have equal footing with men in this area. The survey drew a huge response from women themselves, with 64 percent of the respondents being female. This, perhaps, shows the frustration and across-the-board impact of gender bias issues in IT. Some of the reasons given for gender bias in IT promotion included executives' fear that women managers would take time off to bear children, and doubt as to whether women would be able to manage a predominantly male team. According to the survey, women managers were more common in larger companies than in smaller ones. The survey also found women ranked nearly the same as men in key managerial attributes, such as loyalty, reliability, and skills, although 68 percent of respondents also said they were better organized than male counterparts. Approximately 70 percent of respondents said that the promotion of women to managerial positions has either improved or remained the same in the last two years, but 76 percent concluded that men still have better odds of being groomed as managers. http://esj.com/departments/article.asp?EditorialsID=71 From ACM News, August 28, 2002 "Tech's Major Decline" Washington Post (08/27/02) P. E1; McCarthy, Ellen The implosion in the U.S. technology industry is impacting the number of computer science majors that U.S. universities are churning out. The Computing Research Association reports that computer science undergraduates declined by 1 percent last year, while educators say this drop is worsening. For example, Virginia Tech enrollment is expected to fall 25 percent this year, while George Washington University's computer science enrollment has already declined by more than 50 percent. In fact, enrollment growth in undergraduate computer science departments has stopped completely. Colleges such as George Mason University are trying to stave off the enrollment decline by offering more general IT majors. Judy Hingle of the American College Counseling Association explains that students also avoid computer science courses because they are perceived as difficult or "uncool." Many in the industry are trying to counter the stereotypical view of a computer science career as a profession characterized by isolation and geekiness. Information Technology Association of America President Harris N. Miller says, "Our concern as an industry is that if they begin to again see major declines in enrollment, down the road four years, as the economy picks up, once again companies are going to find themselves in a shortage situation." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64806-2002Aug26.html From Knowledge@Emory Newsletter, August 28-September 10, 2002 How Misperceptions Can Create Havoc in the Workplace It’s no secret that men and women communicate differently. Problems arise, however, when these differences blur perceptions, especially in the workplace. Sherron Bienvenu and Molly Epstein, professors in the practice of management communications at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, offer their prescription for closing the communication gap between the sexes. http://knowledge.emory.edu/articles.cfm?catid=10&articleid=560 From ACM News, August 14, 2002 "Computer Camp Engenders Technology in Girls" Minneapolis Star Tribune Online (08/12/02); Mah, Jackie John Adams Middle School science teacher Bob Snyder notes that many female students are expected to conform to traditional girl behavior and avoid pursuing an interest in science when they enter the seventh grade. He argues that a negative stereotype of science as too difficult or "uncool" runs rampant among post-sixth grade girls, and this stereotype is being reinforced by the media. The need for more computer workers is critical, says IBM community relations manager Heidi Kramer, and her company and Snyder have teamed up to create a weeklong summer day camp called Exploring Interests in Technology and Engineering (EXCITE) to nurture scientific aptitude among girls. IBM employees and mostly female teachers have volunteered their time to mentor 34 female students in seventh and eighth grades. Participating students spend time at IBM's Rochester, Minn., plant, where education about computers is bolstered by fun activities, such as an opportunity to demolish machines and use music software to rate songs. The purpose of these sessions is to demonstrate to the students that science has a coolness factor. EXCITE receives a $425,000 grant under IBM's "Reinventing Education" effort, and the program has been established in 24 other locations around the globe. EXCITE coordinator Jan Garrett-Hoffmann says it is too early to tell whether the program is having a long-term impact on girls. http://www.startribune.com/stories/535/3154079.html "Female-Dropout Study Focuses on Engineering" San Diego Union-Tribune (08/02/02) P. B1; Yang, Eleanor According to a study of 238 students at the University of California-San Diego, because female engineering students tend to think that they are born with math and science skills, they are more likely than males to change disciplines or drop out. The authors of the study, professors Sangeeta Bhatia and Gail D. Heyman, were looking to explain why the number of female engineering students graduating from college has remained at 19 percent for the past 20 years, while females' numbers in other male-dominated fields have grown. According the study, female engineering students feel that math and science skills are innate and begin to question their identities and blame themselves when their performances slip. Males, on the other hand, often consider external elements as causes for failure and more study to be the answer to improvement, the study reports. Female engineering students feel more of a need be better than their male peers and prove themselves in their field in order to belong and be accepted. Bhatia and Heyman say they will conduct further studies on the subject to see if college size and atmosphere contribute to the phenomenon, and to see how early in education female students begin to believe that math and science are innate skills. Click Here to View Full Article From ACM News, August 7, 2002 Frances Allen, who retired last week as a research fellow of IBM's T.J. Watson Laboratory, has enjoyed many fruitful years as a computer scientist, and her distinguished career encompasses much of the field's history. Projects she has been involved in include the training of programmers in the Fortran programming language, software design for the Blue Gene supercomputer, and the creation and refinement of the Alpha system for the National Security Agency's Stretch-Harvest computer. Allen spent much of her career working toward the goal of boosting computer efficiency, and for 15 years led a team that developed compiler software for parallel computers. Her work in this area was instrumental in the company's critical transition from traditional mainframes to parallel systems. She also supported the idea of sharing her company's breakthroughs with other researchers, and inspired other programmers as well. "Programming is still way too low-level," Allen complains. "They still force the programmer to focus on the procedural details of making the machine work instead of the human intention of the problem to be solved." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/06/science/physical/06PROF.html From ACM News, August 5, 2002 "What are the Theories Behind Computer Technology Gender Gap?" VOANews.com (08/02/02); Clements, David The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has documented a decline in the percentage of female IT professionals over the last 10 to 15 years; for instance, women accounted for 36.6 percent of U.S. computer programmers in 1987, whereas in 2001 they accounted for just 26.6 percent. Jane Margolis, who authored "Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women In Computing," studied male and female computer science students at Carnegie Mellon University, and her findings indicate that men and women experience computers differently: Boys often feel a "gravitational pull" toward computers early on, which is fostered by hands-on encouragement, often from their fathers, while girls receive less encouragement. Another discouraging factor Margolis notes is sexism, especially in classes where there are more male than female students. Encouraging more women to pursue IT careers is a challenge, but Allison Druin of the University of Maryland has one solution--providing courses that offer students a solid goal, such as solving real-world problems using computing skills. Meanwhile, Margolis advocates recruitment policies that give more consideration to students that show a desire to be computer scientists, have high grades, and want to contribute to the community, rather than focus on "kids that have been hacking away their entire lives." Mary Flanigan of the University of Oregon has designed computer courses that are tailored to young girls in order to boost their confidence and give them hands-on experience that equals that of their male counterparts. "Using the technology for a pleasurable activity or some way of communicating, some way of really tying into someone's life, is much more effective with girls," she explains. Click Here to View Full Article From "Team recruits for tech careers ", by Dan Caterinicchia in Federal Computer Week, August 6, 2002. "Research shows that "if you're going to capture the minds and energies of American youth today in math, science, engineering and computers, you have to do it in middle school," Bryan [James Bryan, vice director, Defense Information Systems Agency] said, adding that it is much more difficult to get them interested later on." Read the full article From ACM News, July 26, 2002 "Women Look to Shape the Future" BBC News Online (07/25/02); Smith, Emma Wired Woman Society founder Emma Smith notes that more women are using computers, but fewer are taking computer science courses in their university education. Technology experts can wield an enormous amount of influence, and Smith recommends that women in various fields can make revolutionary changes if they incorporate technology into their agendas. For example, female psychology experts could design computer interfaces by understanding human computer interaction; female historians could accelerate the emergence of interactive museums by becoming well-versed in knowledge management, archiving, and content storage; teachers could help develop e-learning systems; and law experts could shape policies that relate to privacy, free speech, child safety, and the digital divide. Smith notes that there has been a long tradition of women developing new technologies against terrific odds, and adds that those odds have improved considerably for women today. But a major stumbling block for women is their preconception of technology careers as "geeky, anti-social and even boring." In reality, however, such careers involve creative thinking, collaboration, and developing new modes of communication. Smith says that this lack of understanding is preventing women from making an enormous contribution to the advancement of technology. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/technology/2132168.stm From The WITI Strategist, July 17, 2002 Coping with Gender Issues in the IT World Debra L. Shinder tells her story of the subtle and not subtle issues women face in the male-dominated world of IT. Gender discrimination has many faces. Surprisingly, women can use it to blame one's own faults or unknowingly add to the problem. Shinder went into IT hoping that gender wouldn't matter. She tried desperately to hold on to the belief that knowledge, results and coming in within budget and time were all that mattered. Unfortunately, that's not all that mattered. Her work in law enforcement and IT opened her eyes. For example, she observed how men react to the "dumb" question. Women who ask one immediately receive "damsel in distress" assistance. Men who ask one are often ridiculed for their ignorance. Shinder proposes a list of proactive positions women can take to eliminate gender bias in IT. This article is a WITI Strategist MUST READ. http://www.swynk.com/friends/shinder/otj_admin_sex.asp From cnn.com (June 15, 2002 Posted: 6:36 PM EDT (2236 GMT) ) E equals MC-wha? .. Americans don't know much about science, and that's cause for concern Associated Press The science foundation reports that as of 1999, about a quarter of all U.S. workers holding a doctorate in science or engineering were foreign-born. For computer science and engineering doctorates, about 45 percent were foreign-born, and for biological sciences, 27 percent. From ACM TechNews, June 5, 2002. "Sally Ride Launches Girls' Science and Technology Club" eSchool News (05/30/02) Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, has founded a club that aims to help girls in elementary and middle school maintain their passion for science, math, and technology in the hopes that they might one day become scientists and engineers. Studies show that most girls lose interest in math and science in middle school, either out of frustration or simply because they do not consider the subjects to be fun. Ride notes that girls may not receive the same kinds of support from parents, teachers, and peers to pursue math and science as boys do. The club is arranged as a forum where girls can bond with one another through their scientific interests, communicate with professionals and role models, and take part in science-oriented exercises. The club is a key component of Imaginary Lines, a for-profit company that hosts national community science festivals for elementary- and middle-school girls. The company has garnered nearly $1 million in private investments and partnered with Honeywell, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and International Rectifier to sponsor science-centered events. The Sally Ride Science Club currently has 1,000 members; the benefits of membership include monthly newsletters, Web site access, and email updates about upcoming events. http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=3735. You can learn more about the Sally Ride club at their site and about ImaginaryLines from its web site. Engineering Career Day at Northwestern University From ACM TechNews, April 24, 2002. "Why So Few Women?" IEEE Spectrum Online (05/02); Applewhite, Ashton New York University's Margaret Wright and Columbia University's Kathleen McKeown are disturbed by declining numbers of female computer science majors, and they say this trend sets in well before college. An interest in computers could help women secure IT jobs that offer generous salaries and exciting career opportunities, as well as the chance to refine developing technologies to better suit them. Wright and McKeown argue that a subtle form of job discrimination is taking place, one based on clashing communication styles: Wright says that in the male-dominated computing culture, extroversion and unabashed promotion of one's own accomplishments is a sign of intelligence, whereas the low-key, self-effacing approach that women may use indicates a lack of same. To improve this situation, certain gender markers should be exposed, such as the male perception that success only comes from a singular obsession with computing, a viewpoint that contrasts with women's need to have a balanced home and work life, according to authors Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher. McKeown contends that mentors will help women better understand how to achieve this balance. Wright and McKeown have implemented or plan to implement interdisciplinary programs at their institutions, so that people--women included--can see the multiple applications of computer science. Wright believes that computing should have a greater role in the curriculum, while both she and McKeown agree that students must learn basic computing principles if they are to advance to more sophisticated systems quickly. The educators also value academic-industrial collaborative ventures. http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/may02/care.html From ACM TechNews, April 22, 2002. "Why IT's Not Seen as a Job for Girls" Sydney Morning Herald Online (04/16/02); Yelland, Philippa Young girls tend to shy away from IT because they consider IT careers to be boring and solitary pursuits. Approximately 50% of girls polled by Multimedia Victoria last year labeled IT as "too boring." Extensive travel was also seen as a turn-off to respondents, especially those with families. In fact, many women in the industry believe family obligations take a toll on IT career advancement, and vice-versa. This cuts to the heart of the issue of white collar workers being forced into working longer shifts, notes former Apple Computer Australia managing director Di Ryall. "Our society needs both men and women to have time to be involved with their children--we need to break the mold of 60-plus hour weeks being considered the norm," she declares. Some women believe that their dedication to their careers can actually benefit their children's perception of them as role models. Meanwhile, many young women see IT as having a more technical than creative focus, when in fact the industry takes the opposite view. "What's needed is the ability to see the real benefits for customers and businesses alike," says Inmarsat VP Camilla Shaughnessy. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/04/12/1018333423360.html From ACM TechNews, April 24, 2002. "Tech Firms Look Beyond Traditional Recruiting to Diversify Work Force" SiliconValley.com, (04/22/02); Diaz, Sam To bring more minorities into Silicon Valley's tech work force, companies are starting to focus outside of long-cherished higher-education institutions such as San Jose State University and Stanford. Hewlett-Packard and others are collaborating with school officials to revamp grade-school curriculums and cultivate future employees when they are just starting to learn basic mathematical and scientific skills. Their push must extend through middle school and high school, where they should encourage students to take courses in calculus, physics, and computer science. In addition, firms should focus on non-technical personnel who may be eligible for entry-level positions. "People box themselves in and they're not taking a risk," explains Catalyst senior research director Katherine Tobin. "Just because they work in HR or public relations doesn't mean they can't do something else." Silicon Valley has made some promising first steps, but they must follow through on the programs they organize, says Aquent manager Ross Fernandes. Economic recession also increases the risk for corporate diversity outreach programs to dry up. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/local/3119796.htm Pro-Poor and Gender Sensitive Information Technology: Policy and Practice Women in Technology International WIT: Women are IT From ACM TechNews, April 12, 2002. "Statistics Show Fewer Women in IT Careers" Computerworld Canada Online (04/10/02); Clow, Julie A decline in the number of Canadian female IT graduates could spell trouble for Canada's tech industry, so the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS) and other organizations hosted IT events across the country in an effort to ignite interest among young women. Women comprised less than 25 percent of computer technology graduates last year, according to CIPS. CIPS director Karen Lopez notes that boys are exposed to computer science much earlier in their education than girls, which gives them an advantage in refining their skills by the time they get to a university; she also says that a math and science background is especially important for IT careers, since most high-school computer courses only concentrate on basic literacy. The CIPS conference at Ryerson University of Toronto showcased several projects designed to encourage Grade 9 girls to pursue IT careers: One of them is a mentoring program in which students can learn about tech jobs from IT professionals. Several students indicate that access to more information about the computer courses their schools offer would be helpful. However, CIPS cites a British survey that concludes most young women do not favor IT as a career choice. One of the keys to arousing interest in women may be demonstrating that IT careers have a social value, according to research from Carnegie Mellon University. http://www.itworld.com/Career/1832/020410itcareers/pfindex.html. Women in computer science. Girls and IT Women and IT From ACM TechNews, April 15, 2002. "Women in IT Group Reaches Out to Feds" Federal Computer Week, (04/08/02) Vol. 16, No. 10, P. 21; Hasson, Judi Women In Technology (WIT) wants to offer female professionals in the federal IT workforce a forum via an outreach effort at the Agricultural Department starting April 29. The initiative aims to boost WIT's percentage of federal representatives and try to interest women in federal IT careers. WIT has been trying to shore up its ranks with more D.C.-based federal IT workers, but the networking and mentoring sessions it hosts in Northern Virginia are not conveniently located for its target demographic. Co-chairman of the CIO Council's Workforce and Human Capital for IT Committee Ira Hobbs says the impending retirement of federal workers makes the need for new IT talent all the more pressing. In fact, Fred Thompson of the Treasury Department forecasts that 50 percent of federal IT personnel will reach retirement age in the next decade. Around 43 percent of Treasury's IT professionals are women. But National Council of Women's Organizations Chairwoman Martha Burk says, "If the government would like to have parity between women and men, it will mean more aggressive recruiting [and]...strategies for hiring and retention of women in the same numbers as men." The WIT conference will showcase government and industry IT employment opportunities for women. http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2002/0408/mgt-women-04-08-02.asp From ACM TechNews, April 5, 2002. "Why More Women Aren't Becoming Engineers" Education Week (04/03/02) Vol. 21, No. 29, P. 42; Selinger, Patricia G. There is a noticeable decline in the number of women pursuing careers in science and technology: Women account for less than 10% of the engineering work force, while the number of female college students earning degrees in technical fields has fallen 9% between 1984 and today. Research shows that women are being discouraged from science and technology at a young age. Boys aged 12 through 17 often nurture technical interests that later lead to engineering careers, whereas their female counterparts are drawn toward biology and language that are usually leveraged into medical, law, and artistic career choices. One of the reasons why girls tend to shy away from the field of engineering is because communities and clubs that serve kids with technical interests are largely male-dominated. Furthermore, boys benefit from a greater emphasis in science and math in their high school education than girls. To interest more girls in science and technology, both educational institutions and households must make a concentrated effort to breed an atmosphere of encouragement where gender does not apply. Much of the responsibility for this falls on the shoulders of teachers and parents, who must convince girls that technical careers are not just attainable, but fulfilling, writes IBM fellow Patricia G. Selinger. http://www.edweek.org/ew/newstory.cfm?slug=29selinger.h21 From ACM TechNews, April 3, 2002. "IT's a Guy Thing" Human Resource Executive, (03/02) Vol. 16, No. 4, P. 36; Raimy, Eric The Commission on Technology, Gender, and Teacher Education reports that the female portion of the IT workforce has shrunk from 40 percent to 20 percent in the last 15 years. Another alarming trend is that women with science and technology careers have a much higher exit rate than men, as documented by the Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering, and Technology Development. Many young women perceive computing to be an uninteresting and solitary vocation, according to experts. This stereotypical, misrepresentative view is chilling the desire for IT careers among women, and is one of the reasons firms are having more and more trouble securing female programmers, network engineers, and systems analysts. To combat this trend and get more female IT personnel, employers need to admit that job-seekers can easily find out whether women employees are happy in their work, and take advantage of this transparency in order to correct business practices that denigrate women, such as lack of respect from co-workers and less flexible work arrangements. Growth and Retention of Women (GROW) is a national effort to encourage better business practices designed to bolster the female IT workforce, such as mentoring and better work assignments. GROW managing partner Nancy Pechloff explains that meaningful relationships and personal connections are an essential ingredient for women in the IT field; mentoring programs and networking forums can fill this void. Meanwhile, IBM, Intel, and some other tech firms are trying to develop the future female IT labor pool through mentoring programs, such as technology camps for female students at elementary schools, middle schools, and universities. http://www.workindex.com/hrexecutive/feature1.asp From ACM TechNews, April 1, 2002. "Hit Hard by Recession, Women IT Pros Regroup" eWeek (03/25/02) Vol. 19, No. 12, P. 51; Stackpole, Beth The gains that women have won in the IT industry may have been lost as a result of the downturn in the economy. IT firms are said to be cutting back positions currently dominated by women, such as project management, quality assurance, and application support, lowering the number of women in the industry. IT job board Dice reports that the salary gap between men and women has widened from 9 percent in 2000 to 12 percent last year. What is more, IT firms are no longer as generous about flextime and telecommuting arrangements, which were particularly attractive to women with children. "It will be a long time before we get back to the point where we were in past years," says Liz Ryan, founder and CEO of WorldWIT, an online networking community for women in IT. Although more positions involving network administration, specialized programming for enterprise resource planning and database applications, and IT security are becoming available, women can also pursue contract and consulting work as an option. In fact, Ryan says an increasing number of women are performing IT work as independent workers. For women who have not been laid off, experts suggest they would do well to update their skills; engage management about the prospects of their positions; and be willing to compromise hours of work, pay, and flexible working arrangements to secure their jobs. Click Here to View Full Article Winning Over Girls on the Gadget Front Computing, Diversity and Community: Fostering the Computing Culture, by Danielle R. Bernstein Women-Related Web Sites in Science/Technology Barriers for Women in Computing Accessibility of Computer Science: A Reflection for Faculty Members by Dianne P. O'Leary Center for Women and Information Technology Women Who Think Differently Wired Magazine's Women in Tech IT: The Industry Without Women From ACM TechNews, March 25, 2002. "Lilith: Geek Music to Girls' Ears" Wired News (03/23/02); Dean, Katie Middle school girls in Madison, Wis., are getting more involved in computers through the Lilith Computer Group, the brainchild of student Susannah Camic, which was co-developed by the Madison Metropolitan School District and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Camic says the group was originally founded "to increase the comfort level and confidence of girls in relation to computers." An online survey of 60 girls shows that the club has had a significant impact, according to the group's chief coordinator, Kathy Konicek. Eighty-seven percent of the respondents are regular participants, while 80 percent report increased confidence around computers and 50 percent report improved grades as a result of their participation. Ten of Madison's 11 middle schools host Lilith clubs, which boasts approximately 150 members in the city. The various clubs come together at a computer fair in the spring. To help participants maintain their interest in computers when they reach high school, the club is instituting a mentoring program this year. Lilith Computer Group Wired News Bots Not a Bra-Burning Issue Does Roberta Compute? Women are Geeky People Too Center for Women and Information Technology Women and IT Sites Cartoons Ain't Just for Boys From ACM TechNews, February 13, 2002. "The Glass Ceiling: Barrier or Challenge?" Computerworld (03/04/02) P. 36; Melymuka, Kathleen A recent survey of 19 women and 11 men employed in leadership positions in IT show that supposed barriers can be used as an advantage and challenge, and that preconceived ideas about how to succeed are not always correct. Many of the women interviewed by Catalyst, a nonprofit business women's group, said their gender kept them from having the close mentorship that many male IT leaders benefit from, but that it increased their visibility and allowed their accomplishments to stand out. They roundly stressed the importance of networking, people management skills, delivering on assigned tasks, and developing focused expertise early on. Surprisingly, more than half of those interviewed did not graduate in IT-related fields such as computer science, math, or engineering, dispelling the idea that fewer women graduating in those fields is the principle reason why they are a minority in the IT workplace. The "Careers in High Tech: Wired for Success" report included the experiences of leaders at companies such as AOL, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Nortel, and Yahoo!. http://www.computerworld.com/storyba/0,4125,NAV47_STO68711,00.html. To learn more about ACM's Committee on Women and Computing, visit http://www.acm.org/women. From Edupage, February 13, 2002. FEW WOMEN PICK COMPUTER SCIENCE AS COLLEGE MAJOR: Alarmingly, fewer women are signing up for computer science majors than in 1984, when the sector was still emerging, according to a study done by Tracy Camp of Colorado School of Mines. Camp's report indicates that 37 percent of computer science undergraduates were women in 1984, but that the number dropped to less than 20 percent in 1999. Those concerned with this trend gathered at Barnard College last week to discuss reasons why women were opting not to study computer science or, once enrolled, to carry through with their studies. Anita Borg, founder of the Institute for Women and Technology at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, said young women want to directly impact people's lives and are turned off to computer science because it is seen as an area where male geeks invent technology for technology's sake. A large factor in any turnaround in the current situation, said Borg, will involve a pivotal shift in people's perspectives, not only those of women toward technology but of technology companies toward women. (SiliconValley.com, 11 February 2002) From the Chronicle of Higher Education, February 12, 2002. "Women Who Have Children Early in Careers Hurt Their Chances to Achieve Tenure, Report Finds," by Thomas Bartlett Women who have children early in their academic careers hurt their chances to achieve tenure, according to a new report. The authors of "Do Babies Matter: The Effect of Family Formation on the Life Long Careers of Women" said colleges should do more to help female graduate students and tenure-track professors who start families. "We need to face these facts very early on and talk about what the real work/family issues are," said Mary Ann Mason, dean of the graduate division at the University of California at Berkeley, who wrote the report with Marc Goulden, a research analyst at the university. The problems women with children face cut across disciplinary boundaries. The report found that women who had at least one child before completing five years of post-Ph.D. work were 24 percent less likely in the sciences and 20 percent less likely in the humanities to achieve tenure than men who became fathers during that time. Women who waited to become mothers until later in their careers, or did not have children at all, were more likely to get tenure. For men, however, it was a different story. Those who became fathers during the first five years of their careers were actually more likely to achieve tenure than men who did not. Also, a majority of women who achieve tenure in the humanities have not had children in the household -- 62 percent. The number was 50 percent for women in sciences. The trend remained consistent even at different types of institutions. "The early baby gap is evident at large, research universities as well as small, liberal arts colleges," Ms. Mason said in an interview. The report suggests several ways in which colleges could help women in academe who have children, including: * Providing mentors for graduate and postdoctoral students specifically to focus on family/career conflicts. * Stopping the tenure clock for childbirth and caring for a young child. * Creating faculty support groups for family issues. * Accommodating couples in which both partners work in academe. * Providing a part-time tenure track with "re-entry rights" and discounting "resume gaps" for candidates who have been inactive for a few years because they had children. The report used data from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients, conducted by the National Science Foundation, from 1973 to 1999.

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