Sending schoolgirls into cyberspace

At first glance it was news of another conference in another local hotel, with the same line up of executives, luminaries and "wannabe" visionaries. But this one is different - it's the fourth annual WITI summit, scheduled for the end of this month.

No, it's not a comedians' convention, but Women in Technology International*, a group founded in 1989 to "create new possibilities for women to advance and succeed in technology". It's just one manifestation of a persistent conundrum in the valley and beyond: if technology is so cool and the US's second-largest industry, how come girls aren't attracted to it?

This issue is important not just to educators and women's advocates but to employers too. Given the critical shortage of people with technology skills, employers are very aware of the potential pool of talent that is simply turned off by the idea of studying science, engineering and maths never mind using these subjects as the basis for a career.

One study showed that only 3 per cent of girls graduating high school headed for further study in these areas. At the graduate level, women represent only 16 per cent of bachelor degrees in engineering and 35 per cent in maths and computer science. So the problem is acute, and in typical Silicon Valley style, there are a number of can-do projects underway to test and carry out new ideas which will at least show young women the options open to them in the technology business.

An old, disused church school in Mountain View is currently being prepared to host one of the more interesting examples of this effort, the Girls' Middle School**. Founded by Kathleen Bennett, a former teacher who has a long career in the technology industry, the school will start with 36 girls, growing as more funding becomes available. $1 million (£704,000) has been raised and Ms Bennett hopes for another $7 million. The school will focus on maths, science and technology, giving its 11 to 14-year-old students all the reenforcement they need to keep up these subjects as they move into high school and college.

However, even if girls are given the opportunity to learn technology, the industry still has a severe image problem to overcome. Dr Pamela Gray is a WITI board member and president of Hermetika, a Web-based market development consultancy which works with start-up companies. "Girls see technology as populated by nerds with limited social skills working horrible hours," she says.

"At school, science, math and engineering are presented as hands-on, isolated, male-oriented subjects. Nobody talks about how these subjects can lead to careers in sales or customer support, for example. They just talk about programmers. The role models are Bill Gates and Larry Ellison we need to expand the horizons of these subjects and integrate them more into what girls are interested in, rather than making them intense and unapproachable."

The WITI conference is playing its part in providing role models the speakers' panel includes: industry guru, Esther Dyson; Java poster child, Kim Polese; the woman who managed last year's wildly successful exploration of Mars, Donna Shirley; and an array of CEOs, venture capitalists and CFOs. Not a nerd with limited social skills among them.

If the problem is a lack of information, the Backyard Project*** may point to a solution. The project, so called because, according to founder Katrina Garnett: "Even in the backyard of Silicon Valley high-school girls have access to very little information about what it means to work in the computer science field".

Ms Garnett, of whom Forbes magazine gushed: "She's a successful mother, wife and entrepreneur while still maintaining a set of flawlessly manicured nails!" is the founder and president of CrossWorlds Software. "Keep your options open" is the theme of the Backyard Project, which aims to demystify all the career opportunities that the tech industry can offer.

"High-school girls don't know what working in the technology business is like," says Julie Lynch, program director of the project. "It's not about sitting alone in a cubicle programming. It's about collaborating on projects and working in teams. We want to encourage girls to take different classes, to see where they fit in and what interests them."

Later this summer, Backyard will undertake its first pilot project at Stanford University. Twenty-four high-school girls will take a one-week course that incorporates a computer science class and a honing of interviewing skills. "Boys tend to interview much stronger than girls," says director Julie Lynch.

If all this works out, with Backyard and Girls' Middle School churning out enthusiastic, informed young women anxious to forge a career in technology, there's a new place they can turn to for funding. Aurora Venture Funding is a two-week-old, two-woman venture capital firm set up to invest in woman entrepreneurs. Willa Seldon, a co-founder of Aurora, is looking for what she calls HWE hot women entrepreneurs to invest in an anticipated $25 million fund.

Quoted in Upside magazine this week, Ms Seldon says: "We think there's an issue of being plugged into the right network". This is a consistent message many commentators believe that men see networking as an integral part of their job whereas women have to negotiate time to meet their peers and cement relationships. Organisations such as WITI and others exist to make those connections and give young women the mentors and role models they need to compete with the Gates and Ellison school of geekdom.