It's about time I linked to Tara Hunt's list of "Women Who Risk", especially since she had the kindness to list me and Katherine as founders of our interactive media company.

Tara writes:

Once I’m not so stinking busy, I am going to start something…first a conversation, then maybe a get together or two. I’ve met some amazing, incredible women already who are pretty excited about a group that is specifically focused on tempting women into technology entrepreneurship. I’ve started a Google Group.

(I should probably assume that it's past time I join that group as well, and for a technology entrepreneur, I suppose my excuse that Google has managed to totally confuse me by requiring I have different accounts for Google Maps API, Google Analytics, Google Adsense, etc. so that I don't rightly know which I'm supposed to use for a Google Group doesn't carry much weight -- though my general squeamishness regarding having monolithic third parties keeping and indexing all communications also reduces my enthusiasm towards joining. Call me another iconoclastic curmudgeon when it comes to privacy.)

There has been some discussion around the Deeply Geeky circles about this list, and other lists, but the focus of such talk has largely been on getting women invited to be speakers at conferences.

That's all fine and good, but I wonder at the implied assumption in many such discussions that female entrepreneurs as a matter of course should aspire to be public speakers. Maybe I'm just too much the non-extrovert, but I guess I have trouble equating accomplishment with being able to talk about accomplishment.

There's no doubt that mentoring is needed in technology, especially since the schools are so far behind on so many levels, and I agree that having eloquent and capable women doing public speaking can help the cause.

The question is how we can effect change in ways aside from holding the microphone at a conference. For women entrepreneurs, there are many ways, such as simply being an effective entrepreneur, a good manager, a mentor to one's employees, an evangelist of the company's values and mission.... It all seems obvious, and yet this is not enough when it comes to effecting real change. And I daresay adding more women speakers to conference panels isn't going to do much, either.

Shelley Powers suggests radical changes in our educational system:

This state isn't reflected just in the lack of women–it's programs like agile computing, which are trying to compensate for behavioral characteristics that we're finding out, now, cause more harm than good. Yet, the colleges gear their programs to people with these same behavioral characteristics. That's where we need to start. We need to completely change the curriculum of computer science in school. In fact, we need to eliminate computer science as a separate field....

...We spend our entire time focusing on the tools, rather than the application of the technology. We're still teaching computer science, as if no one has access to computers because they're still room sized and only available to an elite few.

Computer Science is still too heavily associated with either the math or the engineering departments, neither of which reflects how computers are used today. Computers are used in business and in social sciences, in psychology, medicine, history, and on and on. We associate computer science with calculus, when something like the library sciences would provide more useful integration, with its better understanding of the gathering and categorizing of data....

...There's no connection with what's happening in the world. There's nothing more than a desperate attempt to hold on to what's familiar. Unfortunately, though, the side effect is that the programs attract a certain type of person, and frankly, discourage others who could and would add much to the field.

The most difficult step to take to 'fixing' why there's too few women in IT is first by recognizing IT is broken. In our society, where we supposedly encourage women to go into field, and explore any profession, any such that has this few women in it, is broken. No, we don't need to encourage women, we don't need to make men realize that showing porn images at a professional conference is inappropriate. It goes far beyond just these simple acts: the field is broken, and how it is taught in university only encourages the flaws that break it.

This bold statement speaks to the truth, I feel. We have students working in pingVision, but it's what they individually bring to the job that makes them valuable, not what they've learned in some classroom. I fear there's little interest in educational circles to recognize this, let alone address it. (Shouldn't we have One Laptop Per Child in our own country?)

Anyway, I applaud efforts to get women entrepreneurs noticed, and if I were invited to speak at another conference, I'd be delighted to consider working it into my schedule. Maybe I'd speak to these issues, or maybe I'd just try to offer my little perspective on the universe of things in technology they don't teach in school.