Crashing The Silicon Ceiling: Introducing HuffPost's "Women In Tech" Series

The tech sector has traditionally been a boy's club. But a growing number of women are disregarding the "No Girls Allowed" sign and are not only infiltrating the tech world -- but, increasingly, influencing and leading it.

This crashing of the silicon ceiling is cause for celebration -- and the launch of a new HuffPost series, "Women in Tech." Over the next few weeks, with a sponsorship from Dell and Intel, our Tech section will be spotlighting some of the most skilled and innovative women having an impact on today's tech scene.

Through exclusive interviews, video, slideshows, and Q&As, "Women in Tech" will provide a glimpse into the lives and minds of these game-changers -- from their big-picture thoughts to their favorite gadgets, apps, and people to follow on Twitter.

Among those we'll be profiling are Marissa Mayer, Google's brilliant young vice president of location and local services (not to mention the company's first female engineer), and Susan Lyne, chairman of Gilt Groupe, whose aim of recreating the excitement of a sample sale online is a close cousin to HuffPost's goal of giving readers a sense of occasion when they come to our site. Alexa von Tobel, who has previously shared her advice with HuffPost readers about launching a company during a recession, will fill us in on LearnVest, the online personal finance resource for young women she founded just a few years out of Harvard (where she lived in the same dorm as another budding techie: Mark Zuckerberg). We'll also turn the spotlight on Jennifer Hyman, CEO of Rent the Runway; Beth Simone Noveck, former White House deputy chief technology officer; Twitter's Erica Anderson; and NASA astronaut, Tracy Caldwell Dyson, among others.

Above and beyond their professional successes, these women embody the spirit of Biz Stone's declaration that Twitter "is not a triumph of technology, it's a triumph of humanity" -- and the growing consensus that success includes doing well for others. For example, Maja Matarić who, as founding director of the University of Southern California's Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems, has channeled her technical expertise into making a difference, creating robots that help victims of strokes, Alzheimer's, and autism.

HuffPost Tech has always promoted the accomplishments of women innovators, such as Ada Lovelace, the woman sometimes called "the Founder of Scientific Computing" -- and has featured the work of an array of amazing female bloggers, including Sheryl Sandberg, Ellen Miller, Danah Boyd, Susan Landau, Esther Dyson, Lisa Stone, Lee Woodruff, Marlo Thomas, and Esther Wojcicki.

Nevertheless, "Women in Tech" is built on the knowledge that there's more progress to be made. Marissa Mayer estimates women still only account for 15 to 17 percent of engineers in Silicon Valley.

By celebrating the accomplishments of those women currently blazing trails in tech, we hope this series will inspire more women to consider a career in the field. But no matter what gender you are or your place on the tech spectrum -- from Luddite to programming whiz -- "Women in Tech" will introduce you to some incredible women and their insights into this indispensable aspect of all our lives. Check out the first installment here.

 

 

 

Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff

Comments

[NOSarahFailin2012]

02:25 AM on 07/29/2011

Is it just me or does having these sort of sidelined women's movements in 'boy's clubs" re affirm the ceiling? The fact we need to set aside a minority and pay attention to them based on their gender/race/etc. It subtly implies they need help and cannot integrate on their own.

[Shelly Sullivan Nuessle]

06:23 PM on 07/16/2011

I am glad to see this series. You night want to look at some government departments. The DOT has Sheri Ellis as a Deputy Chief Information Security Officer. Both Federal Highways and the Maritime Adminstration have women as their Information Security Managers, and other DOT Agencies have female CIO's. IT at DOT is a good place to be!

[Kate Krauss]

07:17 PM on 07/15/2011

Hey, seriously, thanks for covering this, women in media! Come say hi to All Together Now on Twitter at @_ATN =)

[Hiqutipie]

08:55 PM on 07/11/2011

There are many young girls just waiting for your Inspiration & Wisdom. There are many great women in all professions but they still don't get the focus because they are overshadowed by the sheer numbers of men. You watch FBN and you'll find large numbers of professional women treated like just another professional because they are just great at their job. You'll find it in law and many other professions but they are still outnumbered by men... Standing together You put the focus on Women professionals that others can look up to & be Inspired by & what a great Inspiration they are but together you have the Power of Influence around the World...

[Evergreen24]

12:22 AM on 07/10/2011

Well, Arianna, highlighting "Women in Tech" in the HuffPost is important and long overdue. I sense that you will focus on Western women who, for reasons known only to Western culture and themselves, have generally chosen not to embark on technology careers. But I hope you will expand your horizon to the Arab and Muslim world, and to Asia, where women, from Baghdad to Damascus to Cairo to Tehran to Singapore to Shanghai, are forging ahead with university study in engineering and technical fields, and establishing careers of achievement in science, engineering and technology.

Compare the relationship of cultures with technology, and see where women are advancing and successful.

[neighborhoodmole]

09:05 PM on 07/09/2011

I've noticed that to be most successful in high tech, you not only have to put career before family, you need a wife to take care of things like laundry and other household and life support chores so you can concentrate on work. So there are mostly married or partnered men, single guys with poor hygiene and lesbians with supporting partners.

[Marjorie Sager]

07:00 PM on 07/09/2011

Many of the top innovatores in silicon valley have Aspergers.Aspergers strikes 3 men for each women.Asking why people like Bill Gates rule this tech sector is a lot like asking why the N.B.A. has so many 7ft players.

[ILoveTheUSofA]

06:59 PM on 07/09/2011

Where exactly in the tech sector did they put up the "No Girls Allowed" sign? I have spent my whole career in the tech sector, and I never saw any sign like that.

[neighborhoodmole]

09:10 PM on 07/09/2011

It is more of a passive thing, not a conscious choice. Women often get left out of spontaneous brain storming sessions, especially when key conversations occur in the mens restroom. One company I worked at actually sent a memo out forbidding work related conversations in the rest rooms to prevent the appearance of excluding the women team members!

[douglasFirCountry]

03:09 PM on 07/09/2011

The NSF maintains statistics on graduation rates and employment rates of women in engineering. 20% of engineering graduates are women. Except in chemical engineering, only half are participating in their professions. That means that 10% of engineers are not being utilized - women. This is in addition to the male engineers who are unemployed. The US is not utilizing a segment of its engineering talent, only because of prejudice.

[douglasFirCountry]

03:06 PM on 07/09/2011

I think that the Huffington Post should also report on the other side of the story - all of the women with Master's degrees and Ph.D.s who are living in poverty because of exclusion from participation in their professions. I have an M.S. in a STEM field and am a patent coinventor. I have been unemployed for 2.5+ years and am on the verge of homelessness after applying for almost 600 jobs, in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. I am also age 60. You walk into an interview and everyone is under 40, often under 35. Even if the interview goes well they are still looking for the younger candidates. No one will believe that an older woman is capable of doing engineering work, even with a patent, even with good references.

[Lina Arbelia]

11:15 AM on 07/09/2011

In 2011, tech sector, still, very much a boy's club. Please be careful how you present these "display" cases of women in corporate positions -not that these women are not worth the advancement. I am curious of the statistics.

[Margaret Heffernan]

07:04 AM on 07/08/2011

Wow. I feel like a relic. I started running technology companies in 1996. I rarely had the opportunity to collaborate with my female peers because there weren't many. But there were some: Carol Vallone (one of the best CEOs anywhere) Heidi Goff, Louise Wannier, Carmen Castillo, Pat Loret de Mola, Nadine Lange, Lurita Doan, Carol Latham. We've always been out there. And we always will be....

[fopplssiegeparty]

10:41 PM on 07/09/2011

Don't forget Carol Bartz at Autodesk. That company was great when she was there, now I wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole.

[Pandoras Folly]

09:25 AM on 07/07/2011

The only real diffence in my experience in any business between men and women in management is pretty simple. competence is equal, ability, talent, etc all equal, however the only two real differences i ever truly noted as being gender biased was that female managers wanted to be liked by their employees even after they made really unpopular or hard decisions, for the greater part the male managers didn't care about being liked. I also noticed that the female managers where more likely to base management decisions on what they had heared about someone and how they Felt that day. Of course there are exceptions to these generalizations.

[Charon Matthew]

05:11 AM on 07/07/2011

I agree. I keep wondering where all the female programmers I used to meet have gone. During the first few years of the UK Dotcom boom, we were all over the shop. Now it seems we've pulled ourselves away from the real tech to do other things. I'm not denegrating that, but I am disappointed. I'm actively trying to do a workshop for my local 6th formers to show them what a female dotcom veteran (and founder member of the origianl UK CompuServe mafia) has managed to do over the last 16 years.

[CatherineAdenle]

02:38 AM on 07/07/2011

This is an excellent article. I commend all the women and hope they keep up the good work. However, the concept of insinuating that women are not on par with men in the field of technology is debatable. Every one has the potential to make their mark in their field of interest, provided they put in the efforts required. There are people both men and women who have been succesful despite the hurdles in life. But there are people who have also failed inspite of all the facilities provided to them. What I am saying here is that you cannot generalize the ability or the potentials of a person based on the gender. It is the age of equal opportuinities irrespective of the gender. If you have the skills, talent, enthusiasim, a can do attitude and the tenacity, you will be the best in an chosen field. There are no barriers as to where you can make your mark or make a difference in respective of your gender, the only barrier is the mental one placed on yourself.

[Ebelskiver]

12:25 PM on 07/09/2011

If you have the skills, talent, enthusiasi­m, a can do attitude and the tenacity, you will be the best in an chosen field. There are no barriers as to where you can make your mark or make a difference in respective of your gender, the only barrier is the mental one placed on yourself.

Having watched my mother work her way through an engineering degree and then seeing the discrimination she encountered working in the field I'd characterize such statements as naive at best. No amount of "skills, talent or enthusiasm" is going to over come the boss who says to you on your first day of work: "I'm going to make sure you never succeed here because women over 40 have nothing to contribute."

[douglasFirCountry]

03:12 PM on 07/09/2011

Wow, at least that was obvious and a lawsuit could be filed. Usually it is much more subtle. They will give the critical path assignments to the young guys and then promote them, and the women become marginalized because they couldn;t get a critical path assignment.

[CatherineAdenle]

06:38 PM on 07/19/2011

..."No amount of "skills, talent or enthusiasm " is going to over come the boss who says to you on your first day of work: "I'm going to make sure you never succeed here because women over 40 have nothing to contribute ."...
Well, to be honest, nothing will make me work in a company where such a boss is working and allowed to be in a position to manage people. It says a lot about a company that will promote such a person to a leadership position and also allow him to get away with such a comment. In addition, no amount of pay is going to make me stay and work for a boss who says that to me on my first day of work or any day for that matter. No man or woman should be spoken to like that at work regardless of what they do or how old they are.