I’m sure that having a male-sounding name has probably helped get my foot in some doors initially, but in the end, you have to prove your worth like everyone else. And I think women designers in software are doing just that.

Any interested woman or man can joined the LinkedIn group and post jobs there.

The ABI also holds an annual conference, well attended by many undergraduate and graduate Computer Science students, where many companies recruit. ABI does seem to attract relatively hardcore CS types as opposed to designers or software-business types, but it IS a community of technical women that you could try networking through.

As a woman in web design, I have always been the minority, working with developers, company owners and designers who were all men. Someone mentioned earlier that women feel like they have to “ask permission” before starting something, or contributing something new. I have never felt like that, rather I find myself competing even harder against the males I work with. I always design with clear reasoning behind something I created, and always stood up for my work.

Having been in the whole recruitment process for several weeks now, my question isn’t where all the girls are, its “where are all the talented, non-template purchasing, skilled web designers as a whole?”

i’m only 30 but i must say it’s been tough for me to juggle my own business and fit 2 kids in there at the same time before my body clock ticked away…!

i can see how it all gets way too hard for some women to pull away from their demanding, heady web work, then have kids and then try and get back into such a fast paced industry where technology changes so much, all after having a dose of baby brain!

for me, i found the css revolution took over while i had my first baby, so getting back into work meant some re-training and a lot of brushing up on old skills….

in any case, thanks to a very supportive family, it’s now getting a bit easier to balance work, kids and play!

but i do wonder myself sometimes where all the rest of the girls are?!?!

claire
freo, western australia

I also graduated from SCAD. I was one of the first people to graduate with an Interactive Design and Game Development degree, and I’m a girl.

Almost all of the professors in that department were women. Including the head of the department. I’ve since run into a few them in the field as well (one is working at Smart Design, another running her own design firm, and others frequent conferences etc.). Game design was not about warcraft, it was about the theories of engagement and play. If you’d like, I’d be glad to chat more about the program at SCAD, and about web design.

-Leslie Chicoine (experience designer -previously of getsatisfaction.com and now at adaptivepath.com)

I had to admit, I’ve never done that. But then I realized that every men I’ve ever known could not resist this kind of boundary pushing.

And also, none of the women I’ve ever known has done such a thing in my presence.

I think this demonstrates a fundamental difference between female and male wiring. Men can’t resist pushing the limits, while women are mostly content knowing they are safe within reasonable conditions. Perhaps this comes from anatomical differences, perhaps hormonal.

At any rate, I agree with Laura that we need diversity of thought to develop the internet’s greatest potential.

I think of the internet as a mass projection of the “mind of mankind” which is both masculine and feminine.

In college, I had men refuse to give me the homework assignment unless i would date them. I had a professor tell me to “act pretty” to get good grades, another professor would not answer my questions (so pointedly it bothered even the guys). In the corporate world, resources weren’t made available to me, a supervisor checked my solutions with a much less experienced men (who wondered why half the time).

So, with much tenacity i kept going and, like other posters, own my own successgul business.

If you want more women, and it is nice to see that you do, consider supporting internships, mentoring and other options to provide an encouraging place for young women to learn.

The insidiousness of industry misogyny can sap your spirit.

And, due to the sleight of hand methods (forgetting to invite you to meetings, jokes at your expense in front of people in authority) many men refuse to see/believe that women are discriminated against at all.

I studied Graphic Design at the Savannah College of Art & Design, which included only one cursory course on the web and one on Flash. There was a major titled “Interactive Design & Game Development” that might have been more applicable, but the Game Development meant that department was populated with sweaty boys who played Warcraft and thought it was homework. (Not to mention that the part of the title that includes Game Development interested me nil.)

Web Design is so multi-faceted, involving Development, Design, & Programmming, that I still don’t know what course of study or background prepares you for it.

I also admit that these profusion of starting points make it hard for someone like me to get started in learning more about web design. Should I be thinking like a print designer? is it a problem I only know HTML/CSS? What is PHP? What do I REALLY need to know how to do? The awnsers aren’t always clear to me, and learning by myself in a bubble, without a mentor, is truly difficult.

Is it a failing in the education system that web design is lumped in “Computer Arts” or “Interactive Design” in a way that makes it unappealing to women? Or is it that young women don’t understand what web design truly means?