For tech jobs, women can get with the program

Eve Tahmincioglu • Profile • E-mail

When it comes to technology, female consumers can’t get too mad when they surf a Web site that’s hard to navigate or their cell phones aren’t designed to cradle easily between their shoulder and ear.

Why? Because there’s a high probability there were few if any women on the technical team that designed that Web site or wireless phone.

Women have not been flocking to the profession of information technology, even though women are bigger consumers of technology than men.

In fact, the number of women in the IT field and those who are heading to college to pursue technology degrees is actually on the decline.

Renee Davias, a software-applications director at a New York-based law firm, sees this every day. Often she wishes there were more women in her IT group and in the profession overall. One of only two women in an 11-member development team, she likes working with her male colleagues but believes another female or two could help the team dynamic.

"With the men sometimes, they’re trying to see who can pee the highest on the hydrant," she says, speaking metaphorically, of course. "Women are much more matter-of-fact, more collaborative."

Davias, who is also president of the Rochester Chapter of the Association of Women in Computing, is doing what she can encourage women to get into the technology field, even speaking to Girl Scouts about the profession.

But her desire to have more women in the technology field may have to remain a dream, at least for the foreseeable future.

Women control more than 83 percent of all consumer purchases, including 66 percent of home computers, and they outpace men when it comes to buying consumer electronics, but they hold only 27 percent of computer-related jobs, according to a study by the National Center for Women & Information Technology.

And from 1983 to 2006, the study found, the number of computer science bachelor’s degrees awarded to women plummeted to 21 percent from 36 percent.

"It’s been a steady decline since the 1980s," says Lucy Sanders, CEO of the center. "The participation of women in IT has never been strikingly high, but now it’s getting worse."

What’s driving the decline, explains Sanders, is the way computer science is taught in schools and how society depicts the profession "as geeky and nerdy." There’s a disconnect between the technical and how we use technology every day, she adds.

So, do we really need more women in IT?

"Yes," says Bill Hardgrave, author of a recent article on the topic for a trade magazine.

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