Why James Chartrand Wears Women's Underpants. Finding Ada — Bringing women in technology to the fore. Government 2.0 Expo Showcase: Women By the Numbers | Cheeky Fres. While I was traveling the last few days, a minor controversy seemed to flame up about a lack of women in some of the Gov 2.0 events being planned by Tim O’Reilly and associated crew. They’re welcome to comment below, but I see no reason to call out individual people and their various comments. Here, I want to personally comment on an event I’ve been involved with planning for Tim during the last few months, and how women have intersected with it in interesting ways.
I’m a scientist and I tend to deal with quantifying data as a mechanism for seeing patterns, and that’s what I intend to do in this brief post. As many of you know I’m the program committee co-chair for the Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase that is happening the day before the Gov 2.0 Summit (everyone, men and women, are able to register, incidentally). We received 189 valid proposals for talks at Expo Showcase. Singling out Tim O’Reilly for critique is a bit narrow, and approaches what I’d call a low blow. Liminal states :: Diversity and technology conferences, part 1: We received 189 valid proposals for talks at Expo Showcase. A few people, men and women, submitted two proposals, but the vast majority submitted just one. Of these 189, only 41 (or 22% of the total) were from women, with 147 proposals submitted by men. I have no reason in particular to offer for this. Perhaps women would like to comment on this blog about why a two month open call for proposals for anyone with a good idea for a five minute talk about Government 2.0 was dominated by 78% men.– Mark Drapeau’s Government 2.0 Expo: Women by the Numbers The women in technology community has been doing a great job of highlighting lack of diversity in conference speakers, using mechanisms like the #diversityfail Twitter hashtag and act.ly.
Mark’s post provides some interesting data on how an O’Reilly conference he’s co-chairing wound up with more than two-thirds of the presenters being male. Did the conference establish and publicize explicit diversity goals? Jon. Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists. Next: Introduction Why are There so Few Female Computer Scientists?
© 1991 Ellen Spertus Abstract Women pursue education and careers in computer science far less frequently than men do. In 1990, only 13% of PhDs in computer science went to women, and only 7.8% of computer science professors were female. Additionally, the percentage of female computer science students appears to be increasing at only a slow rate or even decreasing. This is MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Technical Report 1315. Program Committee: Gov 2.0 Expo 2010 - Co-produced by TechWeb & LShireen Mitchell is an award winning technological woman of color, author, social entrepreneur, nonprofit leader, advocate and a social media strategist. As a self-proclaimed "geekette," Shireen has always embraced her inner techie.
You could always catch her playing pong or "chatting" on her computer on the bulletin board systems (BBS) before we had the World Wide Web. She managed the Politically Black.com website prior to its sale and public offering during the 90's as one of the only women of color web entrepreneurs. All of these achievements were accomplished before Shireen founded Digital Sisters, Inc., an organization that focuses on using digital media and technology to access tools for women and children and consulting through Women Wired In.
Shireen helps to organize various tech events around the country, including the Digital Community, Techno Rodeo,She's Geeky D.C. As Chair of the Media and Technology Task Force of the National Council of Women's Organizations (NCWO), Ms. Why So Few Women in Silicon Valley?