This article was in USA Today:

Women break to front of tech

SAN FRANCISCO — The glass ceiling finally seems to be shattering.

Hillary Rodham Clinton nearly snagged the Democratic presidential nomination. Danica Patrick became the first female winner in IndyCar history. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has emerged as a major figure in world affairs.

Eva Chen smiles at the comparisons. As one of the tech industry's top female executives, she is already accustomed to strides in her own profession.

"It's gratifying to see more women in prominent roles in tech," says Chen, co-founder and CEO of Trend Micro, the third-largest computer-security company in the world, behind Symantec and McAfee. Its market value is $5.5 billion.

Okay, I think it is great that women are breaking through to the top in the high tech industry, but it begs the question why not in other areas as well.  This article posits that in the less structured field of computers and internet there is less sexism:

The Internet boom created a lot of opportunities, says Michelle Peluso, who, as CEO, has fashioned a turnaround at travel site Travelocity. "The entrepreneurial path became easier and more inviting."

"Anecdotally, I do think that there are more opportunities generally in technology for people who may not look or match up to traditional definitions of, say, what an engineer or someone in product management should look like," says Gina Bianchini, CEO of social-networking site Ning. "This is a direct result of the fact that creating things online today is basically free and requires very little direct coding experience to create real businesses or new products."

Also, the article points out that more women are pursuing engineering degrees and  other degree paths that traditionally were male dominated, yet, how often do we read about a women subjected to sexism in the hard sciences and even choosing to leave her first career and doing something else?

Fueling the growing ranks of C-level executives (CEO, chief operating officer, chief information officer ) are more engineering and computer science graduates. The number of female engineering graduates in 2005, the last year for which statistics are available, was nearly 13,200, up 8% from 2000. The number of female computer-science college graduates rose 7%, to 11,235, in the same time frame, according to the National Science Foundation.

I can only hope that the high tech industry might serve as the leading edge of a growing trend of more women rising to higher and higher positions of leadership in society.

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2 Comments

July 11, 2008 2:42 PM

[0+|0-]  woolf's orland said:

i just can't wait for society to (financially) value social justice and social well-being jobs like ones in education, social work, counseling, and advocacy. THEN we'll be talkin about equity!

:)

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July 11, 2008 9:14 PM

[0+|0-]  TheBrawn said:

It's not just in the business/professional working world that we're finding this kind of resistance.

Take a peek at Assistant GM for the LA Dodgers, Kim Ng. (http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ti-femalegm070308&prov=yhoo&type=lgns) The organization is thinking of moving her up in the ranks to GM, which is a great thing. She's been in the game for 17 years, and has been the right-hand person for two major teams. But the fact that she's a woman has been a huge barrier.

Tim Brown from Yahoo! had a follow-up piece of letters he received regarding his article, "Can Kim Ng break the gender barrier?" (http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=ApD.2Az0vAMktpsY5I5qCag8R9MF?slug=ti-atthelettersng070908&prov=yhoo&type=lgns)

Here's to the eventual society Ande and all of us hope for!!!

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