I started http://www.geekgirlblogs.com late last year, with the aim of promting and finding some other ladies out there which has been really good.

I am shocked that the numbers are so small. I knew they were bad but, come on!! I’m shoutin out to the ladies to get on top of that. I’m blessed to be in a startup company where 2 out of 3 are of the female gender.. (I mean we do need a male perspective.)

But, guys you need our perspective too… What do you think the only consumers in this world are men?? Thanks for sharing this.

My wife is in the IT field as am I. We’re both not in the identical field which makes it bearable. It’s probably the last thing we want to discuss at the end of the day, although its great to be able to find out what the other company does to solve various challenges.

I believe that the barrier to women in the tech industry, whether it be technology (analyst, it managers) or business leaders (CIO’s, IT Director) is the rampant geek-cho (geek - macho) that some males tend to exude when they’re around somewhat tech-savvy women. I’ve interviewed a couple female technical candidates in the past (>5 years ago) and whilst they look good on paper, they may not in person (technically). I noted that once my fellow interviewer delved into the bits and bytes of the job, then responses were quite plain.

I’ve noticed this in my company and friends too. I don’t know if its really true, but I sense geek-levels increase when such a TSW are around. In my wife, I see her shying away from such conversations, and then start having a wonderfully deep and well thought out conversation with me when they leave.

I’m quite lucky to share my technical-love of iPod Touches, Blackberries, GPSes and net-neutrality with life-love, my wife.

Each day I do a little outreach to women in tech. There are a lot of groups that do this exclusively (NCWIT is one of the best I’ve seen), and I think that’s amazing. Megan, you mention making tech look exciting and creative to little girls. I’m totally with you on that. It’s never too early to start showing girls that technology is rad. Planting the seed early & often w/little girls is a big part of my personal mission as a technologist & entrepreneur.

Thanks for posting this, Veronica.

The disparity is mostly, however, a matter of evolutionarily generated differences in cognitive skills/orientations between men and women. Many fewer women are interested in this sort of stuff. Contrary to the dogma of social “scientists,” we are not born a genderless tabula rasa — for instance, women tend to do much better than men in tests that measure the ability to remember 3d arrays of objects, whereas men *tend* to be better at rotating 3d objects in their heads. Women tend to have better language skills generally, but men tend to use (often misuse) more words than women, and so forth.

Having said all that, it’s a good thing I’m not the president of an ivy league university. I would no doubt be out of a job in short order.

If you like computers, work with computers. It doesn’t matter what gender you are. No one’s going to kick you out of a computer class because you’re female. In fact, the computer people I’ve known over the past 15 years rarely care at all what gender, race, height, etc. you are.

http://www.myspace.com/thecarps

And here is what he said over at the BOL:

“That’s my band actually. I’ve been listening to BOL for a long time, and when I was writing one day, I had been in the habit of naming songs after people, and Veronica popped into mind!”

Yes, men and woman think differently.

But what if the real number of tech interested woman was three or four times higher than we think and the only reason they don’t go after a technical job is that only so few other woman are doing this. Maybe they think something is wrong when them, that they like this kind of work, because its only guys that works with the tech-stuff.

That why I think its a good thing that we put focus on woman in tech. And that works the best way, if it is woman that is already in the tech business that promote it.

Other jobs might want some more men, but I only care about tech.

You, on the other hand, seem vaguely angry that I would even suggest that women would want to work in the technology field, because they’re “just not the same” as men. Yes, it’s an old argument, and not one that I wish to become embroiled in at the moment, but I think you’re reading into the post a little too much.