Opening doors for women in computing

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from Hewlett-Packard to revamp an introductory course in electrical engineering to make it less intimidating and more effective.

Maribel Gonzalez studied computer
science at UCLA and now teaches at
Intermediate School 216, Bronx, N.Y.

Students can now send questions to the professor during class via wireless instant messaging rather than having to raise their hand--a strategy designed to aid shy students. The instructor can either discuss the question with the whole class or answer it privately later.

Recalling that she was one of four Latina women from Los Angeles public schools who dropped out of UCLA's computer science program, Gonzalez applauds the idea of programs that accommodate relative computer newbies. As a middle-school teacher, she encourages a new generation of potential women techies by focusing on the fundamentals of the field. "I definitely push math and science in my class," she said.

As reformers work to make the computer science field less guy-centric, hundreds of thousands of women continue to make their living and pursue their passions in IT. Here's a glimpse into the lives of three women in tech.

Intrepid entrepreneur: Stephanie DiMarco
Gender biases in the financial-services industry helped push Stephanie DiMarco to become a leader in the tech world.

With a fresh business degree from the University of California at Berkeley, DiMarco applied for a position as an investment analyst. "The seminal moment in my career was in a job interview, when a guy asked me how fast I can type," she recalled.

Stephanie DiMarco
CEO, Advent
Software

An indignant DiMarco decided that she could be her own boss, and in 1983, she co-founded Advent Software.

At the outset, DiMarco's vision was to use then-powerful IBM "XT" personal computers to give software tools to financial-services professionals. The company, which continues to focus on the financial-services industry, now employs about 800. Its chief technology officer, Lily Chang, is also a woman.

As a member of the small club of woman tech CEOs, DiMarco has had her share of slights. In the early days of Advent, she remembers, people often assumed she wasn't the one in charge when she appeared with a male colleague.

But DiMarco says the technology field is still fertile for female entrepreneurs: "The opportunity for innovation is always there."

Hip-hop engineer: April Slayden
April Slayden knows that not all computer researchers spend their entire day sitting in cubicles and staring at screens.

Last August, the Hewlett-Packard software engineer had a hand in setting up a music system at an MTV Video Music Awards after a party hosted by rapper Sean "P.Diddy" Combs. Celebrities at the Miami event--including Paris Hilton, Carson Daly and the Olsen twins--listened just a few yards away from Slayden to digital beats created with an HP technology called DJammer. "It was exciting," Slayden recalled of her invitation. "Who would have thought--an HP software engineer?"

April Slayden
Engineer,
HP Labs

But not surprisingly, a thirst for glamour isn't what brought Slayden to the tech field. The 25-year-old has grooved on computers since she was about 6, when her dad showed her programs on a DOS-based machine from RadioShack. "I was just fascinated by the fact that he could make it show my name, and it could tell if I had the right answer to math problems."

A faculty mentor at Mississippi's Millsaps College encouraged her to continue with computer science after graduation, helping her to choose the tech field over medical school. Slayden earned a master's degree at the University of Rochester and ended up at HP's research arm more than two years ago.

In addition to DJammer, Slayden has worked on a project that uses robots outfitted with video screens and cameras to enable remote "telepresence."

Some scholars say women tend to view technology as a means to make a difference in society, and Slayden fits that mold. "I feel much more satisfied when I feel something I'm doing is contributing to the DJ community or world community," she said.

Computer-averse researcher: Radia Perlman
Radia Perlman is a top expert when it comes to networking protocols, but that doesn't mean she's fond of computers.

Now a "Distinguished Engineer" at Sun Microsystems, Perlman got into computing despite an aversion to the machines. "I actually didn't like computers very much--and I still don't," she said. "They're always broken for obscure reasons."

Radia Perlman
Distinguished
engineer, Sun Labs

What Perlman prefers is thinking about rules for sending data from point A to point B. She did her doctoral dissertation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the topic of how to make networks sturdier, and she invented a "spanning tree" algorithm that became commonplace.

Thinking about smart communication strategies is something that comes naturally to Perlman. She even sees room for improvement in the way people clink glasses during dinner toasts. "That actually drives me crazy," Perlman said, "because it's an inefficient protocol."

Although she's a recognized leader in the field, Perlman says it wasn't always easy being a woman in tech. She's had to overcome feelings of insecurity, as well as a computer industry climate that can be intimidating.

Given that women are often humble and self-questioning, tech companies should work to tone down cut-throat cultures, Perlman suggested. "It may be that the female is every bit as good as the male--maybe better," she said. "But she's more inclined to doubt herself--and sometimes, to solve a problem, you have to believe you can do it."

[Dachi]

The problem is worse than statistics suggest

26% might have been accurate for the number of females in my school that also had a CS major, but after I left school and started working in tech support that number fell closer to ~18%. With every new position I have moved up to since then, the % of women around me gets smaller and smaller.

I am not trying to be mean or draw conclusions based on a small set of information, but the women I have worked with have generally been the least proficient techs in any given group.

Currently, all of my co-workers are male.

Part of the reason for this is, a lot of the girls I met taking CS in school said things like I hate computers, but I took CS to get a good job

If you are not interested in technology I don't recommend perusing it as a career path.

With so few women in IT, how does anybody become an expert on the subject?

Like the previous poster, Ive noticed that the percentage of women around me has declined as I move higher in the company and towards more technically demanding work. That makes it hard for anybody to be an expert on the subject of women in IT. It certainly makes statements like 26% [or 33% or whatever] of IT professionals are women patently absurd. At least, its absurd unless you include administrative assistants, HR personnel, call center staff, and so on.

1. Women have no technical aptitude: They said this about math, too. But girls in the UK have scored higher than boys in math for several years now. I call this proof positive that mathematical and technical aptitude are culturally determined. The US is behind the times.
2. Obsession with PCs during teenage years is predictive of technical success: The amount of time that boys spend playing video games is predictive of nothing except the likelihood of entering IT in adulthood. I see a good deal of games playing among the most junior staff, but none at all amongst those who become most technically successful.
3. CS degrees are required: The best IT professionals by far have degrees in math. Behind them come the sciences and engineering. And a long way behind them come the people with CS degrees. A CS degree will give you a fast start into an entry-level position, but generally provide little of value for more advanced work.
4. Women provide a business advantage by adding diversity: Women who succeed in IT do so for much the same reasons as men: intelligence, hard work, self-confidence, good presentation skills, and determination. They may be more able than their male cohorts because of the extra hurdles they have to jump, but in most other respects they are little different from them.

Most men are clearly uncomfortable with women in IT. They want women to be soft and gentle and docile and, most of all, incompetent and dependent. Anything else provokes spite or sulky silence. Whats needed isnt more girls computer clubs or remedial math courses, but help with learning the social skills that are peculiar to a predominantly male workplace: speak up, dont hold a grudge, work hard, and take responsibility for your own skills building.

IT students in Thailand

My wife has a Master Degree in Computer Science from a Thai university. I am a computer consultant from Europe and can confirm that in Europe it's predominantly male. In Thailand it's the opposite: 80 to 90% of the alumni from the IT faculty are female. The men get the better jobs though.

Culture, not college

As CEO of a thriving software company I must say your article overlooks the in the trenches problem - the culture. The issue is that we need more women techies. Entrepreneurs are well and good, as are the math and engineering types - but all those will increase as an aggregate as techies become more female all the way around.

Techies (who used to be known as hackers before the term was distorted) are not generated in college. Anyone who hasn't spent a good portion of their teenage years doing computer stuff for fun and jumps into a CS program in college are career shoppers, they are very rarely techies. I've yet to see one of these folks be the creative lynchpin of a development team, and almost *always* the weakest link who don't touch a computer in their off time unless it is work related.

Computer science is not a field like architecture, or psychology, or nuclear physics. Unlike a great number of careers, young people can and do get a great deal of exposure to various computing concepts at a young age if they are drawn into the culture. Techies tinker, and then read - then tinker some more. On their own time. For fun.

The catalyst for a techies has long been gaming. This was true back when we were using 300 baud modems and playing Trade Wars, it was true when MUDs were the in thing on campus, and is true today. Face it, Half-Life and the like just don't target females.

When the leading video games seem fun to teenage girls (and they are socially acceptable to play), and when blogging gains in popularity, demographics will begin to change - they already are albeit painfully slow.

Again...techies are created at a young age. If we want a more diverse workforce, we have to draw the pre-teen and teenage demographics into the tech scene as this is when techies are created - not in college programs.

CNET should sponsor an all girl free blog program. Use GAP style graphics, spend time on safety concerns, but implement it remembering girls are NOT boys...but they like expensive gadgets, and buy them just the same as the fellas. Think Apple, but talk XML.

[Bill Dautrive]

CS degrees are important

Sure kids can learn alot by 'tinkering', but they can't learn nearly as much as they can in a structured degree program.

For every kid that starts out learning on his own and goes on to do great things, there are a 1000 that go nowhere, but nearly every CS graduate has the tools to do anything they want.

The phenomenum of people getting degrees in fields that they have no passion, is hardly restricted to CS.

[lewissalem]

you are correct sir...

..while other kids were out playing for their baseball teams and cheerleading, I was messing around with my 286 on weekend nights. That time spent just having fun helped me learn. There will be more woman in IT in the future, because there are more women taking an interest in computing now.

Insulting Insinuation

In this article, it said, "Another focus [of the National Center for Women and Technology] is reforming college computer science programs to make them less about weeding out weak students and more about encouraging all comers to succeed."

So, what this is saying is that in order for women to succeed, the college programs need to be made easier, and they need to pay less attention to the performance of the people in the programs.

It seems to me that this would only serve to accomplish three things...

1. Insult women (as it implies that, in order for them to succeed, things need to be dumbed down).

2. Diminish the quality of education which those going through these programs receive.

3. Diminish the value of the degree overall, as anyone would be able to get one, regardless of ability.

:-(

Women in IT

The comments are both valid and invalid regarding changing college Computer Science programs for women.

My BS CS degree is from 1986 and my MS CS degree is from 1991. For my undergraduate, I was annoyed that students, mostly white male, who failed the lower level CS classes would retake them the following semester. Thus preventing me from taking the class when I wanted the class since they had "seniority". I saw this as an accomodation for those, mostly white male students, to "help" them through the program.

I found the 2 main white male CS professors extremely supportive of me, as a woman. Equal to my male counterparts. They were very encouraging and appear to treat men and women equally.

True, changing the CS program to accomodate women appears to dismiss the programs and insult women. However, in general, these CS university programs were designed by white male CS professors. Anytime a degree program is designed by just one set of individuals ("white male geeks"), it will hurt other type's of students from being successful in the program. Whether they are women or minorities.

The IT industry needs diversity, otherwise, it will be stagnat and lack the full potenial of our resources, people. There are many aspects to IT. We need the diversity of our population to advance in all areas of Computer Science.

Until all engineering and computer science programs are designed by men, women and minorities; they will continue to favor white male students. This is also true in K-12. To be successful in diversifying our IT professionals, we must start at the elementary school level and work our way up into the college programs.

We should all work towards a stronger more diversified IT industry of professionals. It will benefit all of us.

[ahickey]

Schools - Career Guidance and Peers

As Michael Hatley says in his comments techies tinker as a hobby and so inherently know more. I have worked in tech support and I am currently a web developer. Most college only people that I have worked with did not have the experience or intuition to be great techies.

On the other hand when it comes to business management some of the these people really shine. Maybe they should have done a Business/IT course rather than straight IT.

Coming from Ireland with a lot of single sex schools I think career guidance has a huge influence on girls choices when selecting college courses.
From women I know they were basically told to be a secretary, teacher or a house wife. All good, but not exactly the only options available. Also, since these were the options the teachers were given in their day (maybe with nun in there as well) then they don't have the skills to nurture techie talent. You need peers and mentors in the early stages to get over the initial hurdle swhen ding something new.

I would love to know the percentage of guys that drop out of IT courses because they are too tough. Is it the same as the women. I do think it is a bad idea to reduce the quality fo the education for the sake of inclusions. It's only storing up problems for the future. Quality not quantity.

"a son-of-a-bitch to program"

The first programmers were women. I believe there was a book out a few years about the team of women who programed the ENIAC but can't find it right now. Do a search for "Jean Bartik" who has been quoted as saying "ENIAC was a son-of-a-***** to program."

Ada

The first programmer was a woman named Ada Byron. She wrote the first "computer program". She wrote a plan to calculate Bernoulli numbers on Babbage's Analytical Engine.

<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/love.htm" target="_newWindow">http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/love.htm</a>

[unknown unknown]

Sounds like it was her own fault...

for declaring major without looking to see what would be required of her.

[Bill Dautrive]

Looking for diversity in the wrong places

People think that just because they have a collection of people that look different, they support diversity. That is wrongheaded. True diversity comes from a wide array ideas, not from a wide array of skin color and an equal mix of sex organs.

As for the rest, dumbing down programs is not what is needed. That will hurt the industry as a whole. Some universities, do start their students fast and expect a certain amount of knowledge coming into the program, and that is wrong IMO. But even those often offer remedial classes, to get students ready to start the degree program. Prospective students need to ask what is expected and make informed choices. CS is one of the more demanding disciplines and going in blind is a sure fire way to quit in frustration.

To anyone reading this who is thinking about getting a CS student, make sure your math skills are up to snuff or expect it to take a lot longer. Most CS programs require a math load that equals or is close to a mathematics minor. If youa re weak in math, but love computer go with a IS degree, it is not nearly as comprehensive as a CS degree but requires only a few bonehead business math classes.

[aabcdefghij987654321]

Policy vs progress

Is it not the case that many of the productivity gains of the last 200 years or so have resulted from increasing specialization? Does not ANY degree of specialization imply that certain characteristics must confer an advantage, and increasing specialization that jobs are calling for ever more detailed and narrow profiles of the ideal employee? If this is the case, we should expect to see LESS diversity in the types of people in given jobs, not more. Where did it come to be written that diversity was the ideal to be aspired to? Is diversity not the opposite of specialisation? Sure at the lower margin, each additional diverse experience/viewpoint MAY add to overall performance, but it will a case of diminishing returns as each new viewpoint adds less than the previous one until eventually the loss in performance from not having an employee fitting the ideal profile will outweigh the benefit of further diversity and overall performance will decline.

The cornerstone of the idea that all groups should be represented equally in all industries is one of uniformity of ability across all skills and occupations at all ability levels. That is simply not the case and no feasible amount of political meddling or foot stomping will make it so. As far as gender goes, women as a group have superior verbal abilities; men have superior visual-spatial abilities, less risk aversion and an uncanny inability to get pregnant for example. That is not to say the characteristics of one or the other are superior in total, but there certainly are differences which make each better suited to certain types of job and thus an absence of gender imbalance is a sure sign of politically correct meddling and of an economy running at less than optimal efficiency. To deny this is to deny the emperor's lack of clothes and is a triumph of ideology over such triflings as mere facts.

What if females just aren't as good as men at computer programming?

What if females just aren't as good as men at computer programming? What if there are no barriers to entry, and they still cannot succeed? Should we water down the industry in the name of equality?

penis envy

I live in honolulu where the rent is more than silicon valley... and all the hot girls with fat wedding rings... geeze... as a homeless 'hoale' boy) with plenty of experience... (droped out of highschool to work for a .com in seattle) I must say that this stuff is super shallow... the real issue at hand is is being real... btw.. I have met plenty of girls who know their stuff and they dont *****... and they still turn me on..

don't play the blame game

sorry for what happened to this young lady, but who's fault was it? sounds like to me this is another subtle case of male bashing, better yet it is a hatred toward the male gender. does diversity have any intrinsic value?

[Tedjos]

This is an excellent article. I too was very much fond of Computing career. Finally I got settled in the same field with the help of http://cloudjobs.net , a famous job site.

[skmudabbir]

The problem is serious as it's rarely seen as a problem. People are actually not aware that there's a gender issue involved in the field of computing. The leaking pipeline has to be fixed from everywhere. There are leaks all over. It starts right from the teachers. If they are encouraging or not. The counselors and The way they present Computer Science in High School. The field have to bring in the feminine factor that's been missing and which mainly attracts women. The Relationship between the Male-female students and the culture in colleges should be changed. And Teaching Mainly in the CS Classes should be changed from Boring to interesting and interactive sessions which involves not just men but also women.