Bloomington Startup Feb. 8-10, 2008 [a startup weekend event]

Last night, I attended a meeting of Women Inspire, a three-year-old group promoting personal and professional connections between local women. It was an interesting evening that included a speech by 9th District Congressional candidate Gretchen Clearwater. My purpose for attending was to spread the word about Bloomington Startup Weekend, making a special appeal to local women to help us achieve gender equity.

Gender equity is a known problem. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 26.7% of employees in computer and mathematical fields in 2006 were female, earning 84.7% of what men do. Those numbers are in decline even as the jobs in the IT field are more plentiful. This is reflected in academia, where the number of female students is noticeably low. At Indiana University, approximately 11% of students in CS and Informatics are women. One of the groups locally working to reverse this trend is Women In Computing (WIC), who are currently finishing a two-day retreat at McCormicks Creek State Park in nearby Spencer, Indiana.

While we won’t fix the problem simply by getting a large number of local women to show up at City Hall in February, visible involvement by women can have impact. Seeing women collaborating in our photos and streaming video from our event might inspire others to follow their paths. Perhaps more importantly, the flavor and direction of the new company will be different with many women involved than without them.

At the moment, Bloomington Startup Weekend has 11 women on board with 28 spots remaining. Let’s see at least a dozen more women register before we run out of opportunities.

Resources on gender equity:

Association for Women in Computing (AWC)

The Anita Borg Institute

ACM’s Committee on Women and Computing

Carnegie Mellon Project on Gender and Computer Science

The Ada Project

Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research

Center for Women in Information Technology

Women-Related Science-Technology Email Lists