As a soon to be librarian and a female engineer, I can tell you that your
numbers generally reflect the status of women in the STEM areas as a
whole. According to the Economics and Statistics Administration, women
hold less than 25% of tech jobs (2009). I think that you are right on
target in wondering how to attract more women into the techy end of
libraries; in addition to promoting STEM areas to young women, I feel that
a good place to start is to advocate for more integration of coding
(beyond basic web design) into required library courses.

Laura

> Rosalyn,
>
> If we are only 17% women, when we are subset of the broader Library
community, which is majority women, then we are doing something wrong.
And
> that deeper question, what do we need to do to encourage more women to
participate in the community, to make the community as a whole appealing
and safe, is the question I am really asking.
>
> Chad
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 9:57 AM, Rosalyn Metz <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
>
>> I think first we would need to do a survey of how many women are in the
community.  if it turns out that this community is only 17% women then
we're on target.  who knows, maybe we're actually 10% women and we're
way
>> above target.  in which case the real question might be "how do we get
more
>> women in tech."
>> On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 9:11 AM, Chad Nelson <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
>> > Ooops. Hit the wrong key.
>> >
>> > So, about our presenters...
>> >
>> > Is it a problem that only 4 of our 33 presenters are women? Or that
>> only
>> 16
>> > of 95 proposers were women?
>> >
>> > Is there something this community needs to do to encourage more women
>> to
>> > feel like they can and should speak / propose sessions?
>> >
>