Why Strive For Women In The Tech Industry?

The distribution of the sexes in the technology industry is heavily skewed towards men. Many believe that it is important to encourage more women to enter technology fields because of the unique perspective and qualities that women bring to the industry. While gender differences alone may be of some benefit, I believe that a more important reason to actively work to include women in computing is that they are a massive subset of our population that does not enter the industry's talent pool. Women in general do think differently than men, but any given woman will think differently than many other women. A single woman will think like some men as well, so there is not necessarily a drastically unique, gender-specific skill set that men or women in general bring to the industry. The real value of striving to encourage women in computing is the sheer number of potentially outstanding individuals that may now contribute to the technology field as a whole. Therefore, we must actively foster a culture which will entice women to pursue tech education and add to the set of exceptional individuals in the industry.