COSWL Cause

Air is rarefied at the top for Silicon Valley women.
Women in the top rungs of California's major corporations are a rare breed. According to a UC Davis survey, women comprised just 11 percent of directors and senior executives in the state's 400 largest public companies. Guess which California county ranks the worst? Santa Clara, home to "cutting edge" Silicon Valley.
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Google comes in at No. 105, with 15.8 percent of top management being women.
Apple Inc., ranked No. 262 on the list, where women account for 5.9 percent of top management.
2008 UC Davis Study of California Women Business Leaders.

AND MORE:
Almost one-third of women at the "middle level" of their high-tech careers are planning to quit primarily because of perceived barriers to advancement. This according to a study by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology in Palo Alto and the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. The study looked at program managers, software engineers, researchers and such who have spent between 10 and 20 years on the job.

"Very few women reach top technical positions such as Technology Fellow or Vice President of Engineering," according to the study. In fact, the report suggests, Silicon Valley is going backward. "Women comprise an increasingly smaller proportion of the workforce at every level of the technology corporate ladder," it states.

A new search engine has been launched by former (woman) Google employee, Anna Patterson.

From CNN.Money.com ....

Developers of new engine say it offers a more comprehensive way to search the Internet. Anna Patterson's last Internet search engine was so impressive that industry leader Google Inc. bought the technology in 2004 to upgrade its own system. She believes her latest invention is even more valuable - only this time it's not for sale. Patterson instead intends to upstage Google, which she quit in 2006 to develop a more comprehensive and efficient way to scour the Internet. The end result is Cuil, pronounced "cool." Backed by $33 million in venture capital, the search engine plans to begin processing requests for the first time Monday.

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For starters, Cuil's search index spans 120 billion Web pages. Patterson believes that's at least three times the size of Google's index, although there is no way to know for certain.

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Rather than trying to mimic Google's method of ranking the quantity and quality of links to Web sites, Patterson says Cuil's technology drills into the actual content of a page.

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Finally, Cuil is hoping to attract traffic by promising not to retain information about its users' search histories or surfing patterns - something that Google does, much to the consternation of privacy watchdogs.more

Are you 'Cuil'? Try it and see at http://www.cuil.com/

Emerging Technologies Conference @ MIT -- Women in Technology Workshop is on September 23, 2008. From http://www.technologyreview.com/emtech/08/workshop.aspx

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!

The second annual Women in Technology Workshop is a half-day event created to foster awareness of and communication about critical issues facing women in the technical fields. The workshop features dynamic keynotes and interactive breakout sessions.

Join Technology Review's high-level audience in this unique setting to

• CONNECT with senior-level men and women in a variety of areas of technology
• EXPLORE current issues and common barriers facing women in these fields
• INSPIRE dialogue and raise awareness of the issues for women pursuing technical careers
• CELEBRATE female technologists and recognize their unique contributions

Register now and receive the Super Early Bird rate of $300!

The Women in Technology Workshop is held in conjunction with the EmTech08 Conference. Attendees may register for the workshop alone or both the workshop and the main conference.

Preliminary Workshop Schedule

• 12:15 p.m.–1:00 p.m.: Workshop Registration
• 1:00 p.m.–5:30 p.m.: Workshop Keynotes and Interactive Breakouts
• 5:30 p.m.–7:00 p.m.: Reception and Networking
• 7:00 p.m.–8:30 p.m.: Workshop Closing Panel

Doris Lessing: The Nobel Prize in Literature 2007.

I think it is that girl and the women who were talking about books and an education when they had not eaten for three days, that may yet define us.
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.."Please send us books when you get back to London". One man said, "They taught us to read but we have no books". Everybody I met, everyone, begged for books.
..We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women who have had years of education, to know nothing about the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers.