Women in Tech: Brain Drain Task Force

As a father of a teenage daughter, I'm glad to see that there are people focused on addressing this problem, but I'm disappointed to see how little progress has been made. It's particularly challenging when you consider all the initiatives that have been funded at the K-12 level and at colleges and universities can be undone with just one ignorant co-worker or supervisor. There's a great - but small - pool of fantastic female engineers and scientists that are tremendous role models for my daughter and others. Maybe what we need is better role models for our sons!
Front Lines : Female Brain Drain in Science: "Much Has Yet to Happen"

After hours on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Thursday, a group of mostly women gathered to drink wine and discuss new findings on the female brain drain in the fields of science, engineering and technology.

Among them were the members of the “brain drain task force,” a group of researchers and executives from Cisco, Microsoft and other big-name companies who were behind a study — “The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology” — discussed in the June issue of the Harvard Business Review. The study, conducted by the Center for Work-Life Policy, found that 52% of women working in science and tech left their jobs as they neared age 40. That attrition rate, all agreed, was too high.

Links and resources:

• An interview Gordon Snyder and I did with Donna Milgram, Executive Director of Institute for Women in Trades, Technology & Science (www.iwitts.com , www.womentechworld.org ). Donna and IWITTS.com provide the tools to successfully integrate women into male-dominated careers via workshops, publications, products, e-strategies and technical assistance.
• Would you like to know if your efforts to recruit women to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) are working? The STEM Equity Pipeline brings you a free one-hour webinar on "Building Effective Program Assessments: Adapting and Using Tools from the Assessing Women and Men in Engineering (AWE) Project" on June 16th at 2pm ET.
• More Online Teacher Training resources from the CalWomenTech Webinar series.
• Visit Whyville - a virtual city where kids show up as avatars and explore the different parts of Whyville, while learning scientific principles (for example, when visiting the Whyville Aeronautics and Space Administration (WASA) center, kids participate in space-related science activities). Read a study describing how Whyville is successful at attracting girls to science and technology.