But is it an image problem or a reality problem? Are long hours and a lack of flexibility scaring young women away? I think not. After all, many girls are attracted to the legal and medical fields, in which jobs are as time-consuming as jobs in IT. But those are perceived as "helping" professions with lots of personal interaction. In IT, the perception is that it's all about the technology.
I've always loved learning, technology and being around bright people, so as a woman with a high-tech career I've been happy--sometimes. Other times, it's been hell. When my children were small, I took a few years off, went back to school, got my MBA and started consulting. Why? The Silicon Valley "work is life" mentality is simply not sustainable for women--or men--in the long run.
I recently became a full-time employee again. What changed? I requested a laptop, flexible hours and permission to work from home--and I got what I asked for. The question is: Will vendors and IT managers get what they need going into the 21st century? Probably not, unless we figure out how to encourage girls to develop their talents in science and engineering and, more important, how to keep women in IT.
Some Sobering Statistics
According to the ITAA, 425,000 IT positions will go unfilled this year because of a lack of qualified applicants. The U.S. Department of Commerce and the Census Bureau report that women represent 46 percent of the total work-force but only 30 percent of the IT work force. The percentage of women getting computer science degrees has declined drastically since 1986, when women represented 36 percent of graduates. In 1996, that was down to 27 percent, and five years later it's down to around 25 percent. Considering that almost 60 percent of today's bachelor's degrees are earned by women, you don't need a master's in math to recognize a looming crisis.
The "gap" already exists for women in college, and I think it's past the point of help or change. The IT industry must stop focusing on the short term and realize that early education for girls is vitally important, especially in math and science. Five to 10 years seems like a long way off, but the IT profession continues maturing. If we remain short-sighted, we'll lose the valuable resource represented by today's school-aged girls--the same girls who will one day embody more than 40 percent of the work force.
Shattering the Image
My company, ViaSat, recently celebrated Take Our Daughters to Work Day. The girls ate cookies, listened to one VP speak and spent time in various work areas. I saw one girl testing hardware boards with her dad. On the walls of the offices are pictures drawn by employees' sons and daughters (my favorite shows a harried mom tearing her hair out).
But that's only one way to pique girls' interest in IT. Others include programs that send IT pros out to talk at schools; mentoring that brings girls into the workplace; college programs that bring high-school girls onto college campuses for intensive training sessions; and programs that let girls tear down computers or, even better, build simple ones from kits.
Maybe the best encouragement we can give the next generation of girls is to let their working moms and dads know we care about them and not just their knowledge of technology. In this way, girls may be able to imagine themselves as MDs, Esqs. and CxOs.
Donna Woodka is software quality engineer at ViaSat and has more than 18 years' experience in software-engineering programming, project management, and consulting in software process improvement and quality assurance. She has written "The Internet for Girls: Connecting Girls With Math, Science and Technology" (see www.sdsc.edu/~woodka). Send your comments on this column to her at woodka@arpa.net.
RSS
