Its an all male world: Is high tech dominated by men or are women simply not climbing into the fray?

Unashamedly, my title is link bait BUT it’s brought on by recent articles in the WSJ and in Tech Crunch.  Here’s the synopsis.

Shira Ovide writes in the August 27, 2010 WSJ Article, “Addressing The Lack of Women in Tech Startups“

• Only about 11% of U.S. firms with venture-capital backing in 2009 had current or former female CEOs or female founders
• The “where-are-all-the-women” meme is a familiar one, and not confined to the technology world. But in start-up land, where the good idea is supposed to trump social status and everything else, the lack of women in positions of authority stands out.
• She notes several groups dedicated to women in high tech startups: “The Breakfast Club” and TEDWomen (in Massachusetts we have The Boston Club as one example)
• Finally this quote, “Part of changing the ratio is just changing awareness, so that the next time Techcrunch is planning a Techcrunch Disrupt, they won’t be able to not see the overwhelming maleness of it,” said Ms. Sklar, referring to the influential tech conference.

Techcrunch was, in this WSJ article, effectively tagged as a boys club.   That’s the only way to really read Ms. Sklar’s statement in my caffeine hazed opinion.  And, Techcrunch was not pleased, they in fact replied!  Here is a bit of Techcrunch’s view on this topic. From their post on August 28, 2010, “Too Few Women in Tech?  Stop Blaming the Men“

• Every damn time we have a conference [Techcrunch Disrupt]  we fret over how we can find women to fill speaking slots. We ask our friends and contacts for suggestions. We beg women to come and speak. Where do we end up? With about 10% of our speakers as women.
• We do spend an extraordinary amount of time finding those qualified women and asking them to speak…..And you know what? A lot of the time they say no. Because they are literally hounded to speak at every single tech event in the world because they are all trying so hard to find qualified women to speak at their conference.
• I could point out that the CEO of TechCrunch is a woman, as are two of our four senior editors (I’m one of the four). And how we seek out women focused events and startups and cover them to death.
• statistically speaking women have a huge advantage as entrepreneurs, because the press is dying to write about them, and venture capitalists are dying to fund them. Just so no one will point the accusing finger of discrimination at them.

So which is it?  Are women getting the short shrift here or is it something else?  The comments of both the WSJ and the TechCruch article are interesting reading.  The men tend to get a bit uglier in their comments than the women by and large. That was  a disappointment to see honestly.

I can say from my lengthy time swilling about in high tech that I never saw women being actually discriminated against or blocked out but I did see a serious boys club in virtually all of high tech that I’ve worked in.  The behaviours of alot of the guys in mid-management would make me wince and hope for a different class of management on more than  a few occasions.  Upper management was generally open to women in what appeared to be a consistent pattern of select executive positions in operations and HR.  I found that interesting: making stuff run and keeping people motivated and working was women’s work!   I saw this pattern repeated in multiple Fortune 500 companies.  Looking back based on this article makes me think that maybe there is some unconscience blocking in high tech that the men don’t see   but that the women feel.