In my last article, I explored what IBM was doing with its Academic Initiative to help universities and colleges gain access to the research and resources that IBM has to offer. Of course, the goal of these academic institutions is to train the next generation of IT professionals as well as to expand the boundaries of technology research.

But who will be included in that next generation of IT professionals?

IBM's "Women in Technology" Exhibit

This month, IBM is spotlighting its proactive history in developing careers for women in the technology industry. The exhibit, entitled "IBM Women in Technology," lays out a timeline that started in the 1930s, when IBM Chairman Thomas J. Watson, Sr. began championing the placement of women in the customer sales force within IBM, positions that had previously been reserved for men.

Those were the days when IBM was not so much a technology company as a business machine manufacturer. Yet IBM's growth into today's premier worldwide technology organization has been based to a large extent upon its inclusive hiring practices and its attitude of promoting hard-working women and minorities into management positions.

What's It All About?

And that's what the IBM Women in Technology exhibit is really all about: the contributions that women have made—and continue to make—in the advancement of IBM's technology goals.

Consider, as one example of the exhibit, the contributions of Linda Sanford, an IBM Senior Vice President who is working in Enterprise On Demand Transformation and Information Technology.

Currently, Sanford is responsible for working across IBM to transform core business processes and to create an IT infrastructure to support those processes. However, her resume at IBM included previous roles as Senior Vice President and Group Executive for IBM Storage Systems Group, and General Manager of IBM's S/390 Division.

Sanford is also a member of the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame and the National Association of Engineers. She has been named one of the 50 Most Influential Women in Business by Fortune magazine, one of the Top Ten Innovators in the Technology Industry by Information Week magazine, and one of the Ten Most Influential Women in Technology by Working Woman magazine.

More Than the IBM Status Quo

Sanford's success story is one that, until a few years ago, most of us in IT considered emblematic of the technological career path. It's the story of an accomplished executive who happened to also be a woman. In fact, for many of us who grew up professionally in the '80s and '90s, our first encounter with a female executive was probably through an introduction to a IBM employee who was a woman and whose career was propelling her skyward.

Yet, strange as it might have seemed back then, the number of positive woman role models in technology—role models like Sanford—may be diminishing instead of increasing.

Women in IT: A today Without a Tomorrow?

Consider the following statistics:

• A Boston Globe study shows that the proportion of women among bachelor's degree recipients in computer science actually peaked at 37% in 1985 and then declined by 2003 to only 28%.
• At technology research universities and institutes, only 17% of graduates are women.
• Though the percentage of women among PhD recipients has grown in the fields of technology, the overall percentage still languishes at around only 20%.

These statistics are poignantly relevant when one considers that women represent half of the U.S. labor force and outnumber men 56% to 44% on college campuses. And though women hold more than 50% of all management and professional positions, they constitute fewer than 2% of Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 CEOs.

Moreover, within technology companies, women hold only 9.3% of the board seats, versus 12.4% among Fortune 500 companies. And only 11% of women are corporate officers in technology companies, versus 15.7% in Fortune 500 firms.

The Real Success Story

What makes Sanford's accomplishments—and the accomplishments of other representatives in IBM's exhibit as well—even more outstanding is not merely that she is one of the highest-ranking women within IBM. Nor is it merely that she has been identified as one of the most influential women in technology today. Rather, it is the fact that she succeeded in the field of technology against all of the odds laid down by social or cultural norms in the competitive business climate of the technology industry.

Kudos to IBM for its support of such mobility! More kudos to Sanford—and to the other representatives within the exhibit—for aiming so high and shooting so accurately!

Underlying Causes?

Now, before you presume that these statistics hold a hidden agenda about gender discrimination, it may be best to look beyond the so-called narrow "special interest group" focus to what is actually being taught in computer science curriculums and why these courses are not attracting the interest of half of the potential population of students.

We all know that technology is moving at an unparalleled rate of change. We have all had experiences in which the technology upon which we were formally trained—be it in "soft" technologies like programming languages or in "hard" technologies like storage, networking, or infrastructure—suddenly morphed into something new before we could get around to putting our formal training to use.

Who hasn't heard the sad refrain of the unemployed programmer who, after upgrading his skills for a better-paying job through expensive retraining, discovers that there are no longer employers seeking the particular skill he has just acquired? (Remember SmallTalk?)

Bullet Point Resume Skills

At the same time, companies seeking employees seem to have become fixated upon what I call bullet point resume skills. These are detailed lists of accomplishments or skills that are designed strictly for the purposes of enhancing the resume so that they can be easily spotted by the personnel manager, who is winnowing through the employment applications.

These bullet point skills include a fluency in an enormous number of the hottest programming languages (AJAX, Rubio, etc.) and a chest full of certification badges and speakers ribbons from local and national technical conferences.

Not that these are bad things! It's just that as a measure of worth, they are merely milestones on a road of success, not the measure of a successful career itself.

The Technical Curriculum

And unfortunately, the technical curriculum at universities has, over the last 10 to 15 years, tended to reinforce this kind of accreditation minutia, focusing upon the details of implementing specific technologies instead of stressing the problem-solving and teamwork skills needed to succeed in the real world.

This technical orientation and detail focus has created some interesting conundrums in academic settings and has been attributed by numerous professors as a reason that female enrollment in computer science programs has waned.

How?

Part of this is the result of history. These professors note that as the popularity of computer science soared in the first half of the 1980s, many university departments were forced to become more competitive in their admission of students. One tactic was to make introductory classes emphasize the technical minutiae over the more creative and interesting processes of problem-solving. This style of teaching, these professors claim, tends to cater to the diehard and overwhelmingly male technical types, individuals who have already been primed in their social groups to be "techies."

Now what has happened, according to these same professors, is that U.S. enrollment in computer science courses is down generally because the majority of students still see IT as a dead-end ghetto inhabited by geeks and nerds who have isolated themselves from the others behind a hedgerow of details and technical jargon. (And, unfortunately, they may be right, though you and I know better!)

Moreover, women students, according to these professors, find this atmosphere too claustrophobic and too technically colloquial. In other words, there are more interesting and important things to do with one's career besides argue about the importance of syntax or standards with a bunch of geeks over burnt coffee at three o'clock in the morning.

What's Important in IT Education?

Regardless of whether you agree that this may be one cause for the diminished number of women enrolled in computer science classes—or for the lack of women in executive positions in technology firms—it raises an interesting question about what is important to be successful with technology. Is it technical mastery of a particular skill or language, as is often stressed by employers when they are hiring? Or is it some other, less-specific quality that is harder to pinpoint? And if so, what exactly should colleges and universities be teaching? Just the current jargon and the "how-to" of implementing the latest technology?

Or should these institutions aim to develop a technological persona within the character of the individual student, a persona that is adept at using technology to solve day-to-day business problems, that can collaborate freely using a variety of technologies, that has the capability to grow beyond today's technical horizons toward the challenges of the future?

Are we training our students to create more standards and hierarchies within information technology? Or are we educating them to be problem-solvers?

With this thought in mind, click here to listen to Linda Sanford's words about this very question: What does it take to succeed in the technical engineering environment? (Note: Requires RealNetworks audio.) I'm sure that her words will challenge some preconceptions about the requirements of a career in technology while pointing out the real milestones and accomplishments in the realm of IT.

Editor's Note: The president of MC Press Online is Merrikay Lee, who is a former IBM systems engineer and is our own executive role model.

Thomas M. Stockwell is Editor in Chief of MC Press, LP.