ONA Issues

I’ve Seen the Future, And It’s Bright

Amy Webb, ONA Board member and head of Webbmedia group, provides a great example of how women are prepping other women for careers in tech. 

Webbmedia Group sponsored a Digital Divas dinner in DC on Wednseday, hosted by Bonnie Shaw. Webb writes,

[Shaw] typically brings together 50 women and empowers them to talk about the amazing digital projects they’re working on and to showcase their strengths. It’s a great reminder of just how important women are to the digital ecosystem – as developers, designers, venture capitalists, strategists and executives – especially as tech’s well-documented brogrammer culture continues to proliferate.

Last night, Bonnie matched 25 dazzling professional women like Suzanne Philion (State Dept), Alexis Sampson (World Bank), Haley VanDyck (White House), Katel LeDu (National Geographic), Kate Ahern(Case Foundation), Jenn Gustetic (NASA) and many others with 25 young women from the inaugural class of TechGirls, a State Department exchange program that brings girls from the Middle East and North Africa to the U.S. for a three-week dive into all things geeky.

Read more on the Webbmedia blog about the inspiring young women who participated. 

theatlantic:

Infographic: The Horrifying Gender Gap in Media Sourcing

Today’s lousy jobs numbers may go some way to refocusing the election on the economy. But despite the Romney campaign’s best efforts to make the economy central, and political scientists’ insistence that it’s the single best determinant of who will win in November, much of the political conversation has been about women’s issues this year. This week, it was sex-selective abortion; the week before, congressional Republicans tried to ban late-term abortions in D.C.. Earlier, there were battles over whether employers should be forced to cover birth control and the Planned Parenthood funding saga.

Those issues have been unavoidable for anyone paying attention to the news, but you’ve probably most heard about them from men. Though it’s hardly shocking or novel that men are overrepresented in media and punditry, it’s horrifying how true that is even for issues that primarily concern women, as the above graph shows.

Read more. [Image: 4thEstate]

Hacking the Gender Gap Reportback

Notes and resources from the Hacktory’s workshop “Hacking the Gender Gap” at the Women in Tech Summit. Very cool how they captured women’s experiences with tech.

Women In Tech Infographic 

Here’s a screenshot of one detail from the infographic from Women Who Tech. See the full graphic which highlights the impacts of women in tech, recent gains that have been made, and how hiring more women in the tech space increases ROI.