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Wednesday's Woman: Why So Many Women Are Bolting From Tech

Posted by Gayle Kesten Wednesday, May 21, 2008, 04:20 PM ET

Stat: More than half of women working as technologists, scientists and engineers abandon their careers sometime between their 35th and 40th birthdays.

That's when they "experience a perfect storm," says Sylvia Ann Hewlett, whose new study, "The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology,” will be published in the June issue of Harvard Business Review.

"Career problems escalate and family pressures deepen at the same time," writes Hewlett, an economist and founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy. "The losses are massive -- fully 52% of women fall away. This is hugely painful, both for women who abandon hard-won credentials and for employers struggling with worsening labor shortages."

Also to blame: "Macho work environments," she says.

The comments that followed her posting were interesting. A few shared their own experiences, which seemed to echo Hewlett's conclusion, while another chalked up the dropout rate to the difference in the way women and men communicate -- the latter with more authority, whether or not they really know what they're talking about, leading them to receive promotions and getting assigned the more interesting projects.

Then there was a physics teacher named Frank, who, missing Hewlett's main point, took a trip to left field to point out her "muddy thinking and victimization mentality" in the way she interpreted former Harvard president Larry Summer's remarks about the shortage of elite female scientists stemming, in part, from "innate" differences between men and women.

Lest I join Frank behind third base, let me say that plenty of women do find success in technology. WomenEntrepreneur.com, for example, this week profiles "8 Women Techies," who, in turn, pinpointed an additional dozen women they think are making a difference. One of my favorite comments comes from Real Girls Media founder and CEO Kate Thorp: "Every woman is making a change in technology. Just by using technology they are making a difference. The fact is, more women are being drawn to iPods and digital games than ever expected. Women are changing technology."

And in an article for O'Reilly's Women in Technology series, writer Tara Hunt line-lists close to 50 female founders and co-founder of Web 2.0 startups.

For another 50, check out VARBusiness' Most Powerful Women of the Channel feature.

So all does not appear to be bleak. But those examples don't necessarily disprove Hewlett's findings either -- the 120-some-odd women may just be part of the group who manage to stick around. What do you think? Have you noticed a technology dropout rate among women? What's to blame?

Previous Wednesday's Woman articles:
>> Meet TodaysMama CEO Rachael Herrscher

Wednesday's Woman is a new feature you can look forward to reading smack-dab in the middle of each week. Look for more profiles, trends, research and other topics of interest to today's community of hard-working, small-business women. As always, send me your ideas.

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