A Garden Full of Women in Tech

Virginia DeBolt — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:10:46 -0600

The list-making has begun. No, not gift wish lists—I mean those end of year lists of the top, best, or most important. In recent days there have been three new lists of notable women in tech.

The Wall Street Journal published a list of The 50 Women to Watch 2008. While WSJ is focused on women in the business world, I found it interesting to scan this list for women whose businesses were high tech leaders. For example:

Anne Mulcahy, Chairman and Chief Executive, Xerox Corp.
Susan Decker, President, Yahoo Inc.
Ursula M. Burns, President, Xerox Corp.
Julie Larson-Green, Corporate Vice President, Windows Experience, Microsoft Corp.
Safra Catz, President, Oracle Corp.
Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer, Facebook Inc.
Padmasree Warrior, Chief Technology Officer, Cisco Systems Inc.

I'm happy to see that all 50 of these women have reached the important positions they now hold, but I think it's especially exciting to see women at the upper levels of technology companies in the list.

Liz Cullen posted Women and Networking about the WSJ list, saying,

In reading the advice and experiences of the powerful women they profiled, I was interested to see that several women pointed out the same weakness for women in business: networking.

For some women, the term networking conjures images of slick self serving phonies. I actually think that in general women are very good at making connections and building lasting relationships, so I do not think networking should be an area where women cannot excel.

Liz has some good tips for rethinking your networking strategy in her article.

Fast Company posted a list more focused on technology with Most Influential Women in Web 2.0. Fast Company looked for specifically for women innovators. The list included:

Leah Culver of Pownce
Rashmi Sinha of SlideShare
Marissa Mayer of Google
Dina Kaplan of blip.tv
Elisa Camahort Page, Jory Des Jardins, and Lisa Stone of BlogHer
Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post
Cyan Banister of Zivity.com
Gina Bianchini of Ning
Caterina Fake of Flickr
Mena Trott of Six Apart
Kaliya Hamlin, an OpenID evangelist

The Fast Company list ignited a series of stupid sexist remarks on Digg. Saabira Chaudhuri responded to them on behalf of Fast Company in Sexist, Sexist and More Sexist: Digg Responds to Fast Company's Women in Web 2.0. Susan Mernit added her opionion in Calling you out of your name: Fast Company author takes on sexist assholes.

My idea regarding a bunch of sexists assholes is to just keep throwing lists of great women in tech in their faces until they grow a brain. I'm doing my share with past articles about Maria Webster, Addison Berry, Shelley Powers, and Elaine Montoya and Becky Padilla. I've got more interviews in the works, too. And I made a list of great women in tech authors in My Web Design Author's Dream Team.

On The Huffington Post, Allyson Kapin wrote about female pioneers in Cracking the Boys Club: 10 Pioneers in Tech and Web 2.0. She mentioned some statistics:

More and more women are starting their own companies (including tech and web 2.0 ventures). Women make up at least 50% of the Web 2.0 market from a user and consumer perspective. According to TechCrunch, 60% of US Facebook users are women. And 61% of Open Social users are women according to Rapleaf. In major cities like DC and Philadelphia women account for approximately 30% of the IT workforce, cites the US Census Bureau.

Here's Allyson Kapin's list:

Gina Bianchini, CEO and Founder of Ning
Mary Hodder, Founder of Dabble.com and VP of Product Development, Apisphere
Tara Hunt, Co-Founder Citizen Agency and Citizen Space
Sandy Jen, Co-Founder of Meebo
Lynne D. Johnson, Director of Social Media, Fast Company
Beth Kanter, nonprofit blogger
Charlene Li, Consultant and Blogger
Susan Mernit, Co-Founder, People's Software
Rebecca Moore, Director of Outreach, Google Earth
Rashmi Sinha, Co-Founder SlideShare

A list from back in March 2008 at Corporate Board Member listed 50 Top Women in Tech. Although this list is a bit older, I hope you'll take a look at it. If you've seen any lists like this published in the last few weeks, please leave a link for us.

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Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
Web Teacher
First 50 Words

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A Garden Full of Women in Tech