Andy: Looking For A Few Good Women
As we wind up to the beginning of VON, Andy is putting out a call for women to participate. He singles out Christine Herron, and notes that there are a total of 12 women on the participants list. Christine writes periodically about the same issue. I am not sure why there aren’t more women in the technology industry. Certainly there were many at Microsoft, and in every role in the company, but Microsoft is an anomaly.
March 13th, 2006 at 3:19 am
Women In Technology
It seems that the VoIP space is breaking many “traditional” rules. It seems there is an effort going on in giving women technologists the space to express their views and perspectives in VON. Andy Abramson talks about it as well….
March 13th, 2006 at 4:03 pm
Course, not saying that she isn’t talented, but Christine is pretty easy on the eyes. Just saying.
March 13th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
She’s very sharp :)
March 15th, 2006 at 1:06 pm
“I am not sure why there aren’t more women in the technology industry.” –> At MS I noted a good overall male/female balance, but many fewer women than men in technical roles — software development engineering, test engineering, and program management — and fewer still as you head down the software stack from apps/services towards middleware and operating systems. In Windows NT the ratio of women to men in technical functions (excluding marketing) was less than 1 in 10. In MSN that ratio was perhaps 3 in 10.
We worked super hard at making sure the interview process was fair and included a balanced set of interviewers, both male and female. This helped some, but the pool of female candidates was smaller to begin with. One signficant problem is further up the pipeline: average female university entrance rates into computer science and computer engineering programs are dropping across north america. :-( Hard to pinpoint a cause for this but we surely all can help by encouraging boys AND girls to think about technology careers.
As for not having enough female speakers at conferences, there really isn’t any excuse for that. Plenty of qualified candidates out there, you just need to look.