Domino Diva

Last evening I read a wonderful article about women in IT (Making the Climb Women in IT Team Up To Succeed).  The article featured three different women and how they have been working to help other women succeed in IT.  The three women are Carolyn Leighton, Dee Dee Lear, and Sandy Carter.  Carolyn and Dee Dee made some great points that really struck me as I read the inserts about each of them.  Carolyn Leighton is the founder of Women in Technology International (WITI).  In the excerpt about her (Carolyn Leighton), she brought up a very critical point.  Carolyn states "today our biggest obstacles to having women as CEOs is how women view themselves".  This is so true.  I was told by my family I couldn't go to college because I was a girl and didn't need to.  I didn't believe that and therefore didn't let that stop me.  In general, I have never let other people's perceptions of what their role of women in society is stop me from doing what I wanted to do and was interested in doing.  Carolyn Leighton has started 6 companies, she clearly hasn't let her vision be stunted.

In the excerpt about Dee Dee Lear, she makes a very interesting observation.  She talks about young women graduating from college now and states "They have an untainted view and they don't see the glass ceiling.  It's the 'me generation'.  This generation doesn't let the outside world determine who they'll be and they aren't intimidated.  They've seen women as CEOs of large, worldwide Fortune 100 companies and women running for the highest political offices in their countries."

Sandy Carter has done some amazing things with the EXploring Interests in Technology and Engineering (EX.I.T.E) Camp for elementary girls.  She explains in the article that in the first camp, zero of the 100 girls in the camp were interested in IT at the start of the camp.  During the camp, the girls programmed a robot, created a Web site and pretended to be sales reps.  At the end of the camp, 98 out of the 100 girls wanted to pursue a career in IT.  This ties directly into Carolyn Leighton's point that the biggest obstacles women have today is how they view themselves.

I hope you enjoy reading the article as much as I did.