While there are a number of notable women leaders in the IT field -- including Cisco's very own Judy Estrin, who is a Senior Vice-President and CTO of Cisco, the number of women in the IT field overall is small. At this point women stand to be left out of technology education and the excellent employment opportunities it affords. Only 7.2% of corporate officers in Fortune 500 technology companies are women. Across all industries, women are 11.2% of corporate officers. Statistics on the number of women in the IT field are not kept by the Bureau of Labor Statistics but women are widely reported to be underrepresented in this rapidly expanding field.

While national statistics on young women in IT education are difficult to come by, I hear from teachers around the country that young women sign up for keyboarding and applications while the young men dominate the programming and hardware classes. Let me share some statistics I have with you.

• Only 17% of high school students who took the Advanced Placement Computer Science test in 1997 were female.
• In Nebraska an IT Academy had zero students in their start up year in 1995.
• In Fairfax County, VA only 26% of computer science students were female in 1998.
• None of the six winners of VICA's Internetworking Skills USA Competition were female.
• Chantilly High School in Virginia in 1998 had

- 7 women and 71 males in computer programming
- 2 women and 42 males in advanced placement computer science
- 0 women and 19 males in advanced auto cad

• In Hawaii, state level data from the community college system showed that only 8% of Computers, Electronics and Networking Majors were women.
• The percentage of females in Cisco Academies ranges from 50% to zero.

Well maybe women and girls just aren't interested in IT.

I think the 3 women who you will be hearing from later in this presentation, would disagree with that statement. They are Katie Wright, a Cisco Academy graduate and Cisco intern from Wilmington, NC; Anne Urevick, Director of Philadelphia's Regional Cisco Academy; and Oakland Husband who has been in the IT field for more than 30 years.

They are going to share their successes with you, and I too, would like to share some good news with you.

Interventions Work!!!

Four years ago I conducted a national workshop on Preparing Young Women for High Skill, High Wage Careers in Idaho. Mary Lou Oslund, a Marsh Valley High School Technology teacher from Pocatello, had only a few young women in her drafting and photography classes. Now 4 years later she still sends me clippings about her classes, which are now 40% female.

• In 1991 my colleague Jo Sanders directed the Computer Expert Equity Project and some of the results included:

- In Oklahoma in 1991 an elective computer science class had no girls and
   in 1992 it had 31%.
- In New York, the ratio of girls and boys in the computer lab after school
  was 2 to 25, now it is one to one.

• The Internet Explorer Program, based at the Iowa State University's College of Engineering, is a 6 week summer camp for girls in computer technology with an emphasis on minority girls:19 out of 20 girls from its first class are in college and 17 are in science or engineering majors.
• In 1995 Carnegie Mellon University's freshman computer science class had 8% women in 1999 it will be 37%.
• IWITTS directed The New Workplace for Women Project in 1995 - 96 in collaboration with the National Council of La Raza and assisted 8 employers in increasing the number of women from, in some cases, 0 percent of new hires to 25%.

How did these classes get these kinds of results?

Well, here are the core program elements

• They focused specifically on women and girls
• They proactively recruited females.
• They targeted girls in groups
• They used female role models.
• They appealed to female interests - such as Carnegie Mellon moving practical applications to the beginning of its computer science program rather than having students work on code first.
• They provided career and salary information.
• Secondary schools included parents.

If you are interested in learning more about Practical Strategies for Recruiting Women to IT, I will be conducting a workshop on this topic immediately after this plenary session, that will include Cisco Academy Case Studies for which participants will develop a recruitment plan. There are also fact sheets and articles on this topic on IWITTS' website at www.iwitts.com, along with information about our Futures trainings and publications.

Today most women are in the workforce, supporting themselves and their families. Yet the median weekly wage for women working full-time was only $456 compared to $598 median for men. Women are still earning only 76 cents on the dollar compared to men. In the past 20 years women have made great progress in the workforce -- they are doctors, lawyers, even astronauts -- but these are professional occupations and 73% of women in the workforce are in nonprofessional occupations. For most women in the workforce things are as they were 20 years ago; this is even more true for women in trade and technical positions. Most of the wage gap between women and men is due to the different jobs they work in, and the fact that the workforce is still highly segregated by sex.

One of the things that I love about Cisco Academies -- and I always tell teachers about them when I do trainings throughout the country -- is that they are of benefit to all students, not just the relatively small percentage of students who will go onto graduate from college. Additionally, because the curriculum was designed for students with an 8th grade math or reading level, young women as well as young men who have not excelled in math and science can still have the opportunity to work in the lucrative and expanding field of information technology. The thinking among educators used to be that if students had opted out of upper level math and science courses during high school, then they had eliminated the possibility of a science related career for themselves. Teachers still think this and are amazed when I tell them about Cisco Academies.

I am really impressed with Cisco's commitment to women in the IT field as witnessed by this plenary panel today. It was Cisco's idea and I want to make sure that they receive full credit. They are truly a visionary leader for women in the IT field.

Katie Wright is 18 years old and graduated in May from New Hanover High School in Wilmington, NC. She is currently doing a 1 year Cisco internship and is preparing to enter NC State in the Fall in the scholar's program to do a double major in both engineering and computer science and in humanities and social sciences.

Anne Urevick is the Director of Philadelphia's Regional Cisco Academy. She has been teaching hardware related curriculum at the high school level for 15 years. She has consistently had 25% to 30% females in her classes. She is certified as a Novell C&I, and is certified in computer servicing technology and science in math. She has a masters degree in education from Temple University, a BS in Technology from SpringGarden College and an Associates Degree in Science and Computer Engineering Technology.

Oakland Husband has been in the IT field for more than 30 years. She is an IT consultant to the oil industry and for the past 7 years she has taught IT classes at North Harris Montgomery Community College in Houston. She has Unix certification and is close to completion of the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineering certification.