Women, Technology and Leadership

Yesterday our oldest daughter Gabby, along with 31 other other high school women, received an Aspirations in Computing and Technology award from the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) and Bank of America at the Technology Stars of the Future Technology Showcase & Awards Ceremony in Charlotte, NC. At the ceremony, each of the young women were recognized for their outstanding aptitude and interest in technology and computing, leadership ability, academic history, and plans for post-secondary education.

NCWIT is a coalition of more than 160 prominent corporations, academic institutions, government agencies, and non-profits working to increase women's participation in information technology (IT).

Here's some interesting facts from the NCWIT website:

• Girls represented just 15 percent of Advanced Placement computer science (CS) exam-takers in 2006; that’s the lowest female representation of any AP exam.
• In 2007 women earned only 19 percent of all CS degrees. Back in 1984, women earned 37 percent of CS degrees.
• Women hold more than half of all professional occupations in the U.S. but fewer than 26 percent of all computing-related occupations.
• Only 13 percent of Fortune 500 technology companies have women corporate officers.
• A study on U.S. technology patenting reveals that patents created by mixed-gender teams are the most highly cited (an indicator of their innovation and usefulness); yet women were involved in only 9 percent of U.S. tech patents.
  

Lucy Sanders, CEO and Co-founder of NCWIT is quoted in a press release about the event, saying “Encouraging young women’s interest in technology careers is critical. Our workforce needs their creativity and their innovation.”

Gabby had a blast at the ceremony yesterday, making lots of new female friends that have just as much of a passion and interest in technology as she does. Check out the list of winners linked here.

Congrats to all the Aspirations in Computing and Technology winners!!!

Women in the Technical Workplace

I did say I was taking a blog sabbatical this week to work on proposals but could not pass up using some time at lunch to write this up......

The Boston Herald has an interesting piece today titled Looking out for working women. The article focuses on the work done over the past ten years at the Center for Women and Work at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. The Center is involved in a number of nationally focused programs, including Project Working WISE, funded by a $240,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

Project Working WISE started in January 2006 and successfully planned and organized an intergenerational and interdisciplinary conference in April of 2007 on workplace factors associated with women's success in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Since the conference, Project Working WISE has concentrated on outreach and dissemination of results.

Here's a quote from the Herald piece:

While the median weekly wage for all men working full-time or on salary is $766, for women it’s just $614, according to 2007 data from the U.S. Department of Labor. The gap is even wider for minority women: the median weekly income for black women is $233 less than that of all men, while Hispanic women earn $293 less. And the most common job for women to have is still secretarial work.

The Herald piece also quotes project advisor board member Lisa Brothers, a professional engineer and the vice president of the Boston-based engineering and contracting firm Nitsch Engineering:

"Only 10 percent of engineers are females; we are definitely under-represented" and "there are still wage inequalities" in the industry.

The Center will celebrate its tenth anniversary on October 23rd in honor of U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas.