I came across this well-written post from Jolie O’Dell: Why We Don’t Need More Women In Tech… Yet.

This dubiously accurate nomenclature of “women in tech” places the entry-level PR girl at a startup in the same monolithic group as 50-year-old engineer at IBM. This is unfair to the women who do real technology work; it’s doubly unfair to women as a gender, as it smashes the “tech” label onto anything related to the Internet. Does having 50 male engineers and 50 PR women at tech companies mean we’ve acheived gender equality? Hardly, but it does make it more difficult to correct the true imbalance: There are not enough women doing real technology work…

…We are misguided to demand more women in tech when there simply isn’t an adequate supply of competent technological professionals to support gender parity. Women in tech begins with little girls playing with science- and math-related toys, and it takes much longer than just a few months or a few years to undo the sociological mores of a few millenia.

(the bold is mine)

I really, really thought we’d be further along by now. When my older kids were little (15-20 years ago) “it” was all about boys with dolls and girls with trucks, which I admit I never fully bought into.

But then instead the pink aisle at Toys R Us grew into 3 aisles, the Legos became warring “Bionicles,” special video games were developed for girls (it was assumed all other games were for boys.)

No wonder girls don’t pursue tech careers, and it’s such a loss to us. Women approach and solve problems differently than men (gross generalization, but I believe it to be the case) and with greater access to and interest in tech at a young age who knows what could be unleashed? I hope more young voices like O’Dell speak up.

Go read the rest of Jolie’s post.