 The Five Percent Enigma(Page 2 of 3) Also, many women, according to Peleg, believe that the business world and male world are not conducive to having women around. "I've often heard other women say, 'I feel so uncomfortable walking into a room as the only woman.' I've never felt that," she adds. Roadblocks to the Top Carolyn Leighton, who founded Women in Technology International (WITI) in 1989, says it's disappointing that so few women have made it up to the top of technology. As the head of a networking organization, she has witnessed women's involvement in technology for 17 years and offers a different perspective than Peleg's on the glass ceiling. "We see a real difference between what women say publicly and how they feel," comments Leighton. "At WITI conferences, when women can speak privately, they express a feeling of being held back, left out of the old boys' network, and being overlooked or left out of the promotions process. They don't express their views at work or when speaking to the press, because it would jeopardize their careers." "There is a richness of factors, including the self-limiting," says Jennifer McFarlane, CEO of the Women's Technology Cluster (WTC) in San Francisco, on the reasons that keep women out of technology. "I hesitate to emphasize discrimination, because there are so many factors. The most effective thing is to address your own self-limiting behavior." McFarlane, like Peleg, describes herself as "comfortable in a roomful of men," but she acknowledges that women and men network differently. "Women's groups have a more social way," she says. "With men, you're expected to demonstrate your business competence in a shorter period of time." McFarlane notes that the WTC, a business incubator whose mission is to increase the number of women leading technology companies, differentiates itself from other incubators by providing professional expertise instead of space and infrastructure. And, despite the name, she emphasizes that 40 percent of WTC mentors are men. "This organization is about men and women working together," she says. "One of our goals is to integrate women into the existing networking structure." Rebecca Kidder, a board member of San Francisco Women on the Web (SFWow), believes that a lot of women work in the web industry, especially in marketing and web content. "But there is a dearth of women in web development, as in the actual programming part of the process," she says. "I've found in web teams that women only account for about 10 percent of the staff. Programming is seen as a scientific skill in which women generally are not encouraged to pursue interest." | ||
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