{"id":53,"date":"2005-06-11T15:24:26","date_gmt":"2005-06-11T20:24:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/?p=53"},"modified":"2005-06-11T16:14:53","modified_gmt":"2005-06-11T21:14:53","slug":"high-tech-girls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/high-tech-girls\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender Blind"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking a lot about <del>sex<\/del> gender.  While I&#8217;ve never encountered any glass ceilings because I&#8217;m a girl&#8230;the recent discussions (<a href=\"http:\/\/interllectual.com\/article\/257\/rant-are-css-style-galleries-and-awards-sites-good-old-boys-clubs\">boys clubs<\/a> ,  <a href=\"http:\/\/joshuaink.com\/blog\/331\/its-all-about-that-man-whitey\">man whitey<\/a> &#038; <a href=\"http:\/\/interllectual.com\/article\/265\/article-264-in-which-andrea-eats-some-humble-pie-and-then-goes-to-alaska\">sexist goes to alaska<\/a>) about &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/2005.sxsw.com\/interactive\/conference\/panels\/?action=show&#038;id=IAP0053\">where are the women of the web<\/a>&#8221; got me to thinking.  What are the statistics for women in the high tech field?  <\/p>\n<p>When I look around my work place (University of Texas at Austin, Information Technology), I see more women than men.  In fact, my current team (web technology team) used to have only one guy&#8230;and we jokingly called ourselves &#8220;the harem&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dol.gov\/wb\/factsheets\/hitech02.htm\">US Department of Labor&#8217;s report on Women in High Tech Jobs<\/a>, in 2001, 30 percent of computer systems analysts, engineers, and scientists were women. In addition, 25 percent of computer programmers were women.  By comparison, among all other engineering specialties, women represented fewer than 11 percent.  So, in my eyes, girls are making wonderful progess in high tech careers and being the optimist that I am, I expect this trend to continue.<\/p>\n<p>But it does take more than optimism to make progress.  I personally believe the keys to appropriately increasing the numbers of women in the high tech field are as follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Early empowerment in school &#8211; encourage all children to develop their skills in mathematics, science and technology.  A great example of a program geared for girls in Austin is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.girlstart.org\/\">GirlStart<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Role models &#8211; provide positive role models that inspire any child with the ability to pursue their dreams.<\/li>\n<li>Focus on Ability, Talent and Quality Results.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Because when it gets right down to it&#8230;it doesn&#8217;t matter a bit what equipment we have below the belt (at least when it comes to getting things accomplished on the web).  What matters is the quality of your braincells and your ability to &#8220;make it so&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking a lot about <del>sex<\/del> gender.  While I&#8217;ve never encountered any glass ceilings because I&#8217;m a girl&#8230;the recent discussions about &#8220;where are the women of the web&#8221; got me to thinking.  What are the statistics for women in the high tech field?  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}