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 THE STAT 26Percentage of wireless customers who use their cell phones to take picturesMore Vitals
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MAY 12, 2004
Technology's Too-Small Sisterhood [Page 2 of 2] "GRUELING BUSINESS." Blaming the status quo on overt discrimination misses the point, according to Whitney, Richardson, and others. To a certain extent, it's a chicken-and-egg problem. Due to the sparseness of high-ranking women professionals in the industry, women in tech outfits often lack role models, mentors, and guides as they rise through the ranks. This cycle has created a shortage of women with CEO-caliber résumés. "There's not as much pressure to find a woman today for a key executive role," says Steven Mader, CEO of Christian & Timbers, a placement firm that specializes in filling executive slots. "A lot of that has to do with the fact that there aren't enough of them available." That's partly because the tech sector's workaholic culture often gives women a stark choice between children and careers. "It's a grueling business," says Vickie Farrell, a vice-president at Teradata, the data-warehousing and database subsidiary of NCR Corp. (NCR ). "There's a lot of travel, late nights, working weekends, and ad hoc meetings. The women who have the children and aren't able to stay late at night didn't have the advantage I've had in getting ahead." During the first week in May, Farrell hit Chicago, Paris, and her San Diego home base all within just 72 hours, a travel itinerary that's typical for her. ENTREPRENEURIAL INCENTIVE. This may help explain why Farrell sees plenty of women in midlevel tech slots, heading development teams and running software-engineering groups, who later get off the executive ladder. "I just lost a manager who wanted to spend more time with her family," she says. Other women who drop off the radar go start their own companies. While startups may be equally grueling in terms of workload, they offer flexibility that can make balancing life and a job easier. They also offer women a chance to direct their own fate to a much greater extent than in larger corporations. "If nobody is ever going to let you run a $5 billion company, then what's your choice if you want to be the boss? Your best bet is to be an entrepreneur," says Anu Shukla. She worked in vice-president-level jobs at several tech outfits before founding Rubric, a marketing-software concern that she sold for $366 million in 2000. She currently heads RubiconSoft, another software maker that has received $8.5 million in venture funding (Shukla has installed an executive team made up mainly of women). SPENDING POWER. Even in startups, though, women still lag behind. According to venture-capital tracker VentureOne, companies founded by women made up only 6.16% of all startups in 2003. That's up from 4.18% in 1997, but still far below what it should be, says Richardson, Whitney, and other advocates for women in technology. Again, some of this may be a chicken-and-egg problem. The robust networks male entrepreneurs often use depend on access to top-level execs at companies and VC firms who make funding decisions based to some degree on personal relationships. This could change. According to Mader of Christian & Timbers, finding female board members has become a top priority for corporations seeking to avoid criticism for ignoring a group that spends more than men on tech toys, for instance. By any measure, however, women still have a long way to go before the technology field looks anywhere close to egalitarian.
 By Alex Salkever, Technology editor for BusinessWeek Online
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