From...

January 20, 1999
Web posted at: 12:00 p.m. EST (1700 GMT)

by Deborah Radcliff

Anita Borg

(IDG) -- When Shelley Hayes, fresh computer science degree in hand, landed her first IT job, she wound up answering phones. That's where the company's owner thought women belonged.

But Hayes paid attention to those callers - mostly resellers in need of an entirely new software line - which she soon developed behind the owner's back.

"By the time the owner knew about it, orders were coming in for the new products. He set the issue [of keeping females in clerical jobs] aside because we were already making money on the products, and I was six months ahead on the technology," says Hayes, now a systems architect at Xerox Corp. in Stamford, Conn.

That was 15 years ago. Although women have made many advances in the workplace since then, things haven't changed all that much for women working in the information technology field. In fact, the percentage of technical jobs held by women reportedly hangs at a static 28% , even as the number of women in the workforce approaches 50%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Despite the fact that enrollments are dramatically on the increase for computer science degrees, the percentage of women seeking such degrees is dropping fast.

According to the National Science Foundation, the number of bachelor degrees in computer science awarded to females was 40% in 1984, says Anita Borg, founding director of the Institute for Women in Technology (IWT) and a member of the research staff at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in California. That number has dropped to 27.5%, according to the U.S. Department of Education's most recent survey of 1996 graduates.

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Borg asserts that companies are acutely aware of that growing gender gap in their IT departments. But most businesses still unwittingly perpetuate the problem. Corporations need to clean up their advertising imagery to better portray females in technical fields, she charges. And they need to listen to the myriad reports on gender differences and embrace diversity of thinking in the workplace.

Borg isn't holding her breath waiting for such changes to take place, however. She and others like her are spearheading grassroots mentoring and educational organizations to reverse that trend and entice more women into technical jobs. In so doing, they're taking on educators from the primary to postgraduate levels. And they're tackling stagnant corporate mentalities to make technology itself more female-friendly.

Leading the way

One such woman is Lenore Blum, an educator, author and research scientist who founded the first computer science program at the all-women Mills College in Oakland, Calif., in the 1970s. Soon, she will organize the multitude of fragmented women's outreach programs at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh into a pipeline program. She says she hopes the program will serve as a national model for other universities to follow.

In fact, when Blum moves to the university this summer, she will join her husband and son, both professors in the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon.

"A few years ago, women couldn't get jobs in the departments where their husbands worked," Blum says. "This shows a change of attitude is already taking place."

Inclusive methods

At the primary school level, Anne Redelfs, associate director at the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI), under the auspices of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, is working to change the way teachers treat girls.

The NPACI's outreach workshops teach educators proven ways to make technology and science more attractive to girls and minorities.

If you're looking for inspiration at the corporate level, you're likely to run into Borg, who, with the help of Sun Microsystems Inc. in Mountain View, Calif., is developing Web technologies to unite women's technical and scientific professional organizations.

She also has strong words for technology developers: "We're at a time when women are beginning to use technology in a very significant way. Companies that can really understand and build for this market have tremendous opportunities. I don't think they can do that with a nearly all-male engineering workforce."

Starting early

Even the Girl Scouts recognize the importance of early mentoring. The Girl Scouts of America offers proficiency badges in technology and the Internet for Brownie, Junior and Senior levels.

In fact, one former Girl Scout, 18-year-old Pheonix Maa, achieved her Golden Award for building three Web sites for Girl Scout chapters. Maa is now a first-year computer science student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. There, she's working with a mentor, also a former Girl Scout, on another undergraduate Web project.

"A lot of people have ideas, but they don't know where to begin. They need direction. The Girl Scouts certainly helped me get started," Maa says.

As obvious (and as stereotypical) as it may sound, the real problem, Borg says, is that females and males are just so different. And most educators and work environments still cater to males, she adds. For example, boys are more aggressive in the classroom, Borg says, adding, "Boys elbow girls off machines." That practice, she says, is carried over to the workplace, where men are given a "can-do" pat on the back, while women are often held back.

In addition, women's contribution to technology is woefully underrepresented in the classroom and technical field at large, Borg says.

"A young cousin of mine taking a [University of California at Berkeley] computer course was really upset that the professor had shown this highly acclaimed video, Triumph of the Nerds. It leaves out any role women have ever had in computing," says Borg, who was recognized this month as one of the top 25 women on the Web by the San Francisco-based forum Women on the Web. "The women in this class get the message that they have to be different or strange to get into this field."

The NPACI strives to reverse such presumptions before young women reach college. Working with its sister partnership, the National Computational Science Alliance, the program concentrates on faculty education, partnerships with educational and mentoring programs and student mentoring programs such as science camps and career development. Those efforts have resulted in a 63% retention rate at undergraduate schools and 97% at the graduate level, according to Redelfs.

"Girls who participated in after-school technology programs years ago are now attending Stanford, MIT and U.C. Berkeley," Redelfs says. "They return each year to speak in the same after-school programs that got them started."

Keeping the faith

Workplace discrimination hasn't gone away. Dory Kim, technical recruiter at West Valley Technology in Sunnyvale, Calif., still hears veiled favoritism from a handful of male clients. "They'll say stuff like, 'This is definitely a men's shop,' or 'Find me someone who can lift over 100 pounds,' " she explains.

Many, such as Sharon McVeigh Pettigrew, would rather leave than fight. "I think more women in technology like me are opting out," says Pettigrew, principal at Call Center Group in San Mateo, Calif. "They're moving into small business and managerial positions because they can see there's more opportunity to control their own destiny."

Indeed, of the 40 women in attendance at a December meeting of the San Francisco chapter of Women in Technology International, only four were actual technologists. The remainder worked in product marketing, management, public relations and recruiting.

Enter Borg, who was raised by women working in male-dominated fields. She even has an Amelia Earhart-like snapshot of her aunt, a World War II pilot, posted on her bulletin board. Borg wants to see more women involved in the development of technology from the get-go.

That's a good idea. Women perceive and use technology differently from men, according to a white paper by three computer science faculty members at Carnegie Mellon, in which 29 male and 20 female computer science students were interviewed. According to the report, males said they use computers as the ultimate toys, whereas females consider computers tools, such as teaching instruments, to perform service "in a larger world."

In the IWT's second brainstorming session late last year, Borg mixed nontechnical women with technical women to hash out some uses for technology. "They came up with very unique ideas, from family calendaring and communications to plumbing sensors," she says.

Through its collaborative Web development project with Sun, the IWT will rebuild the technology behind Borg's 12-year-old Systers.org virtual community to extend the community to all technical and scientific women's support and mentoring groups. It also will serve as a virtual product development center, where female technologists can build on the ideas generated from the IWT's focus groups.

"I want all of these folks connected. We're all doing too much reinventing of the wheel," Borg says. "The Internet enables us to share the ideas we have without having to create another hierarchy. We hope that these two projects will come together and create a structure of continued involvement."

Wait it out

Although it will take time for the goals of these women and others like them to make a lasting impact, it's still a very good time for women to enter the IT field. Most employers are happy to hire women, especially now that there's a shortage of technical hires. In fact, many of Fortune 500 companies now cosponsor technical women's groups.

And nowadays, those famous "people skills" traditionally associated with women are in high demand, says Vivian Victor, application development manager at Ernst & Young LLP.

"It's not enough to develop programs anymore," she says. "We need to focus more on our client's business needs. Women's understanding of people and integration of concepts are needed more today than ever."

Radcliff is a freelance writer in northern California. Photo by Richard Morgenstein.