"...Don't get me wrong, the gender ratio is a hell of a lot better now than it was when I took my first tech-related job back in the early 90s, but to say that things are balanced ... well ... it's just not true.  My dear friend Christine Herron, an accomplished business woman turned VC, has for some years now made it a practice to count the number of women in the room at any given event or conference. Based on her relatively strong statistical analysis for an array of major technology industry confabs, it would seem that we women have hovered at about an 11 percent participation at such gatherings for several years now.

I've heard word that investors are specifically seeking female entrepreneurs yet of the hundreds they meet in any given year, only about 2 percent are women.

Why?"

--Cathy Brooks, writing in the new feminist blog, BitchBuzz.

I'm enjoying both getting quoted by Sarah Lacy in  the Businessweek women in tech column she posted this week and reading the piece itself.

Also digging Sarah's post on her blog, which quotes a dude telling Julia Allison to lose weight (ROFL) and gets into some of the girl power vibe of younger women in tech.

I'm also working on a column for the upcoming new web mag BitchBuzz, edited by Miz Cate Sevilla, that gets into some of the disconnects around what is pro-woman behavior in the Valley(yes, talking with Sarah helped prompt that).

So here's the question:

• What can women in the Valley do to help one another further?
• How do we smooth out some of the disconnects about what feels appropriate in style and presentation (or agree to give one another more supportive space)?
•  If you're a women working in tech, how do you want other women to help you?

To put it another way, I'm a big supporter of both BlogHer and She's Geeky, and a big fan of Women Who Tech and Women 2.0/Bay area Girl Geeks dinner--but how do we bring all these things together? What's the opportunity to further given one another collegiality, mentoring, suppport?

If we had a new girls network, what would you want it to look like?

I'm always leary of everyone's "Top" lists (tho of course I thrill to be included on them), but there's a joy, range and sassiness in Orli's latest list of 50 powerful women bloggers that makes me want to to share it,. (Okay, the list also makes me want to dance to it--she's got 80s disco as the soundtrack for a slide show.)

Some of the bloggers new to me that I will be checking out for inclusion to my reading list include:

• Cleverclogs - Marjolein Hoekstra
• Slikcharm - Laurel Papworth
• Profy - Cyndy Aleo-Carreira
• Lorelle - Lorelle VanFossen
• Nten - Holly Ross
• SiliconCally - Calley Nye
• GettingAttention -Nancy Schwartz
• Michelle Martin - Michelle Martin
• IslandGirl -Lisa M.Shammas
• KeeryHowley - Kerry Howley
• Thornet - Michelle Thorne
• Carobotero - Carolina Botero
• Lisa Goldman - Lisa Goldman
• Mideastyouth - Esra'a Al Shafei
• Blacklooks - Sokari Ekine
• Pop17 - Sarah Austin
• Crushofthemonth - Myriam
• Consortpartners - Kathy Johnson
• Rocksinmydryer - Shannon Lowe
• Clear Blue dei - Susan Mellott
• Geekspace for Women - Maria Webster

That's almost half the list, which means, once again, Orli has taught me something new.

Marjoelein Hoekstra has put together a twitter list (aka twitterpack) for these folks (explains some new follows)

NOTE: If you're on this list, and you come here-or if you're a blogger who'd like to support the inclusion of women and diverse voices in the conference realm, I urge you to add yourself to The Speaker's Wiki, a resource for speakers lovingly tended by Mary Hodder, another amazingly wise blogger who I'd add to the above list in a flash. (Ross Mayfield and the folks at Socialtext also deserve kudos for hosting this.)

"Women who are speaking, who are consumers who talk, sort of like journalists, sort of like authors; we are conscious, individually and, more and more, collectively, of our power to speak and be seen in the world of public discourse. We have jobs and we're in public, we're out of the domestic sphere, but our thoughts, the way we're framed in public conversations, in the media, isn't yet all the way out of the domestic sphere. My point is that we are no longer containable by old style media. We aren't an elite of "influencers" to be courted and co-opted. We're journalists who write about who we are, not what we're told to write, like a million mommy-blogging Hunter S. Thompsons writing The Curse of Lono instead of their assigned sports article."

--Liz Henry, blogging about women online, post blogher.

"Being a mom has forced me to become less self-centered and more aware of the small thing/big thing differences in life. Yes, I still have dreams that I'm being picked on by my seventh-grade classmates but when I wake up I'm able to laugh it off a bit better. Being at Blogher has made me more aware of this change...(snip).... I almost never approach anyone because I'm intimidated, but once we're in a conversation I'll become quite extroverted. Since Penelope has been born, a lot of this fear has disappeared, though I still find it difficult at times to go up to a person and say hello."


--Six Apart co-founder Mena Trott, blogging about speaking at BlogHer this afternoon and her life today.

Susan sez: I like this post because it talks honestly about transformative experiences about becoming a parent, business and blogging, and letting go of ego.

"It's easier for a female to start her own company than to move through the ranks of a big corporation. You don't have to ask anyone's permission in a start-up."

--Jessica Livingston, co-founder of early-stage start-up incubator, Y Combinator., quoted in a Mercury News story on how the number of women chief executives at Silicon Valley's biggest technology companies dropped to zero this week, with the departure of Diane Greene from VMWare.

"So now we have a company with a woman CEO and a woman CTO and a woman COO. And the work we do? The work we do together? It's only incidental that it's software. Because what it is -- what it really is -- is applause. It is praise, for all these glorious women. Because it is fitting, and it is right, to give them thanks and praise."

--People's Software co-founder Lisa Williams, writing about PSco and how BlogHer --and the conferences it has held--played a game-changing role both in her life--and in bringing our new company together.

From around the twittersphere, blogosphere, etc  this weekend:

Loren Feldman: "People like the puppet more than you because he is more real than you are. More honest than you are, smarter than you are. More human than you are. People want the Shel puppet to win. The same can't be said for you my friend."

Dave Winer: "They let Shel Israel off the hook. He gets his name back, the puppet is retired. The mock trial they were planning for the TechCrunch summer party, that I learned of this morning, is cancelled."

Dave Winer: "All I could think about is how mean this community had become."

Susan sez: Mean, indeed.

"When I enter a room of suits (like the conference last week, which was called Supernova and was concerned with the business of the internet and which I was covering for Valleywag), it's never the women who put me at instant ease. It's the the other freaks: the femmey guys, the queers, the girl with the lip ring, the boy with the crazy boots. The women in tech I once looked to for support, though they may have once thought I was a cute enough anomaly to tolerate when I could be their Token Whore Speaker, are not the instant allies the web sisterhood wants you to believe they are. It's not okay to say this, but I'm scared that for most women, period, feminism is no longer about breaking the rules men have set, but learning men's rules well enough to seem like they're playing along. But that's probably exactly what some women think I'm doing when I take (or took) my clothes off for money. I'm out of reasons to explain why it wasn't. I can point to my home, my city, my lovers, my friends, my community, my work as reasons, as proof -- that I made it in my own fucking Sinatra way, and that my voice is worthy."

--Melissa Grant Gira, writing about both the much commented on paucity of women at SuperNova, and the fact that identifying as a feminist and a subversive, political  queer does not align, much of the time, with being a Web 2.0 digital elitist,  whether you are pro women in tech or not.

Susan sez: In other words, there's more than one status quo.  As you can see through Meilissa's questioning, feminist identity politics and alt gender politics are not exactly the same thing. Here's some of my thoughts on this--

One could argue that the right to be sexual (and have Zivity take your picture), the right to be a woman and not feel like--or be--a minority--at a major conference are tied to identity and people's rights and abilities to own and control their own identities.

However, one could also say that there's a second set of issue here that are as much a part of gender politics as personal identity.-I'd name them as the right to be openly alt or queer, to be frank about sexuality and sexual values, to be open and accepting of those with other sexual orientations and values--that are as much a part of gender politics as personal identity and that are just as threatening to the status quo as feminism.

Melissa, I don't think the women I know wish you ill, or fear you.

I think they, like me, want all of us to find a way to do the right thing, for it to not take so much effort and, as you say, for everyone to have joy.

 I think that what feels like rejection is plain old repression, the need for so  many of us to take a deep breath, face what is different and then ask the honest question "Can we find this truth in ourselves?"

What creates change is the will to change. What creates knowledge--and insight--is listening.
I hope people hear your words, Melissa--this is a beautiful and disturbing post.

"We found that 63% of women in science, engineering and technology have experienced sexual harassment. That's a really high figure. They talk about demeaning and condescending attitudes, lots of off-color jokes, sexual innuendo, arrogance; colleagues, particularly in the tech culture, who genuinely think women don't have what it takes -- who see them as genetically inferior."

--Athena factor researchers Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Carolyn Buck Luce and Lisa J. Servon , explaining the reasons women leave technology careers in their mid-30s and early 40s. This Computerworld article is part of the promotion around a HBS article on their research.