This is something near and dear to my heart which is why I am one of the contributors to this series that was pulled together by Tatiana Apandi at O'Reilly.

It's called Women of Tech: Hear Us Roar and in O'Reilly fashion, has an animal associated with it. Tatiana has chosen a lioness.

There are 16 essays in this series and each one will be published every day starting, well yesterday, Sept 4th. So there are two online already.

I think the very first installment by Leslie Hawthorne is a perfect introduction because she is someone who says:

If anything, in an effort to be the change I wish to see in the world, I've distanced myself from questions of gender roles in my work. If we are all (to be) equal, it seems counter-intuitive to look at my work as informed by my being a woman.

I know many women who feel this way.

Hers is a very different perspective from the second essay, by Marie Klawe, who reminisces about growing up in the 50's and 60's being discouraged from her interest in math and science because she was girl. As an educator today (she is the president of a small college) she pays close attention to the trends.

I'm sure each one of these essays will be wildly different from the other. I'm looking forward to reading Shelley Powers' essay. Shelley has a new book out about adding AJAX to existing websites called Adding AJAX. She's the only woman on the list that I happen to know and I have a ton of respect for her. and boy can that lady roar!