By Ellen Lahr (Director of Communications, Excelsior College)
Statistics say up to 56% of women leave the tech fields by mid-career. Why? What factors have led us down this path? More importantly, what can we do to reverse the trend?
These questions Excelsior College (Albany, N.Y.) posed to its eclectic panel of women technologists on September 21 at Negotiating the Glass Maze: Women Achieving Success in Technology, an event co-hosted by the College’s School of Business and Technology as well as the NYS Capital District Chapter of the Society of Women Engineers.
The event challenged its participants to reflect not only on their own experiences, but to brainstorm potential solutions to how to keep women in the technology fields.
Watch the video recording of the panel here.
Topics broached in the hour-long panel included:
- Striking the right balance between work and home, which often means being willing to accept “imbalance”.
- Learning to juggle the inherent gender “paradoxes”.
- Why changing technology, including the rise of the web and the miniaturization of technology, bodes well for the future of women in the field.
- Why you need to “own” the mentoring relationship.
- Whether the growth of online education — and the anonymity it provides — fosters greater opportunities for women to take on leadership roles.
- The importance of acknowledging the “unspoken” rules of the game –- then breaking them.
Photo credit: Ulrike Schultze
Editor’s note: The video emphasizes the need for women to find mentors to help navigate the glass maze to a great career in technology.
About the guest blogger: Ellen Lahr is the Director of Communications for Excelsior College.
