women in technology

Ladies, flex your tech know-how and win a trip to the West Coast. Mobile payment pioneer Square is holding a contest for a three day, expense-paid engineering intensive at their San Francisco headquarters — and men need not apply. It's no secret that the world needs more women engineers, and Square is intent on building a brighter future for females in the tech industry. The first annual Code Camp at Square will host 15 of the top female applicants for coding workshops, mentorship sessions with Square executives, plus a little R&R with a tour of Bay Area landmarks.

Women aged 18 or older and enrolled as a full-time student pursuing a computer science, computer engineering or related technical degree, are eligible to enter the contest. Interested applicants must submit a resume and answer several short essay questions online by 5 p.m. PST on Friday, Nov. 2. Empowering more women to pursue tech-related fields? Talk about a cause close to our hearts!

While the tech industry continues to grow with new products and start-ups, there's something missing — the ladies. Noticing a serious lack of women in their engineering department and that of expanding companies nationwide, Etsy announced this week the new Etsy Hacker Grants, a scholarship and sponsorship program for women in technology, hosted in conjunction with Hacker School in New York City. Etsy will provide 10 needs-based $5,000 scholarships for Hacker School's three-month Summer session (the school is already free; living in Manhattan isn't) to women interested in a career in computer engineering.

Billing the Hacker School program as a “three-month, immersive school for becoming a better programmer. It’s like a writers retreat for hackers.” With the school's focus on a supportive learning environment and exploring coding through open-source software, Etsy hopes that raising awareness for the program will help bridge the gender gap at Hacker School and eventually computer science as a whole. Plus, there's a twist in the 2012 Summer program — it'll be on location at Etsy headquarters; we're already jealous.

Are you a budding female engineer or know some lovely ladies with a calling in coding? Help Etsy spread the word on the Hacker Grants program. Here's to a women-driven technology future!

As host of GeekBeat.tv and tech expert extraordinaire, Cali Lewis spends close to 75 percent of her time on the road. It's fitting that during a recent Macworld panel when asked to name five technology innovations she can't live without, she didn't give a coveted spot on the list to just any fad. Cali's list of life-changing tech is a combination of the practical for someone always on the go and the lifesavers that make mobile work life efficient. Check out her picks below!

5. Pandora and Spotify — Cali uses each music streaming service equally so she's never without tunes. Discovering new music is Pandora's niche, while she uses Spotify to have on demand music on any device.
4. Powerbag — Knowing the outlets at an airport or convention center are almost always already in use by someone else desperate for battery juice, Cali has "fallen in love" with the Powerbag solution and charges her gadgets wherever she goes.
3. The Cloud — The ability to access all your important music, documents, and media files from anywhere just by signing in to a cloud account is a pretty big deal. Never go without a file again! 
2. Tablets — Without the need to carry a heavy laptop around, tablets have reimagined the way people work on the road — and lightened the load.

Check out the one tech advancement Cali can't live without after the jump.

Although being female in the tech industry isn't unusual, we're certainly outnumbered. At a large industry event like CES, there are perks and disadvantages to being a part of the underrepresented gender, so you definitely walk away with a solid pro/con list after the event. The best part was networking with other savvy ladies in technology, which made the con list — spoiler: it's pretty short — worth all the trouble.

• Pro: Respect from our fellow journalists and bloggers — While we overheard some unfortunate comments about women in the tech industry last year, 2012 was all about saying hello, getting to know our favorite writers, and even sparking new friendships throughout the week.
• Pro: Instant bonding with your female ilk — Both during the conference and at networking events, we were able to instantly bond with our female brethren. It was so nice to see so many smart, successful women in the industry, and meeting them was one of the conference's major highlights.
• Pro: No bathroom lines. — I waxed poetic about this one already, but I can't talk enough about how refreshing it was to enjoy a line-free trip to the restroom with plenty of sink and mirror space.
• Pro: Fewer booth babes on the show floor — Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't see as many booth babes as I have in years' past. Don't get me wrong, they're still there, but I think it's becoming a wider-known fact that if you need a female with her boobs popping out of her shirt to attract attention to your booth, it means your product probably sucks. Let's hope this is a trend that sticks.

Hear about what we didn't like about our time at CES this year after the break.

We just arrived back in San Francisco after a whirlwind four days at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and while we're still processing the stats, data, information, and products we've seen, there is one thing we noticed: there's an obvious disconnect in the ratio of men to women at the show.

CNET brought together some of the most influential and powerful women in the tech field — including Padmasree Warrior of Cisco, Marissa Mayer of Google, Caterina Fake of Hunch, and Lindsey Turrentine of CNET — at this year's CES to talk about the state of the tech industry, pink gadgets, and how to strike a balance between work and home. You can see the entire panel (it's about an hour long) in the embedded video after the break, but first, a few highlights:

• The general consensus is that women have come a long way in terms of the technology field, but there's a lot more work to be done.
• Marissa Mayer says that more students (men and women) should be exposed to computer science at the high school level, so that they have more of a chance to get into the technology industry after college. "When speaking about women in technology, it becomes a numbers game, but it's not about the size of the slice of pie, it's the size of the pie as a whole; we need to make the pie bigger, and expose women to computer science earlier."
• Caterina Fake lets her daughter in on her work life in order to make her feel included. She conducts family meetings every morning around the breakfast table to talk about what worked yesterday, what they could do better today, and the goals they have for the week ahead.
• Lindsey Turrentine says that one of the most important things you can do for your children is to show a strong partnership at home. When raising kids — girls and boys alike — it's important to show that you can do both: have a strong family and lean on each other to pick up the slack when work needs to be done. No one's career is more important than the other.

See what all of the amazing women had to say about the state of the tech industry for women in the full video after the jump.

After professing my career envy of Facebook's Randi Zuckerberg, she offered a closer look behind the scenes of Facebook's consumer marketing division. Randi (pictured center), along with Aubrey Sabala (left) and Erin Kanaley (right), works with products across Facebook (like Facebook Places and livestreaming), bringing them to users in new and innovative ways.

According to Randi, Facebook prides itself "on having a real 'hacker culture' where ideas can come from anywhere. They don't have to come from the top down. They come from any employee. I'm pretty proud that our marketing team embodies that hacker culture also, it's not just engineers." Here, a glimpse into their awesome jobs, why Erin is going to have one geeky fantastic wedding, and exactly why there's a Snoop Dogg doll perched on mama-to-be Randi's shoulder.

What do you do?
Randi Zuckerberg: "I lead the consumer marketing team at Facebook. It touches every single industry and every other person. I have never found another job where you can work on a presidential election and the Olympics and the Oscars and Haiti and you will be meaningful at all of those different kinds of events."

Where does Snoop Dogg fit in? Find out more, including what the team is most excited about for Facebook in 2011, after the break.

Although being female in the tech industry isn't unusual, we're certainly outnumbered. At a large industry event like CES, there are perks and disadvantages to being a part of the underrepresented gender. The best part was networking with other savvy ladies in technology, and made the con list worth all of the trouble.

Pro: Instant bonding with your female ilk. Both during the conference and at networking events, we were able to instantly bond with our female brethren. It was so nice to see so many smart, successful women in the industry, and meeting them was one of the conference's major highlights.

Con: Dealing with male chauvinistic attitudes. While sitting in a press-only area, I heard a group of guys talking about the number of females in attendance at the conference. One of them actually said (seriously), "I was wondering what all of them were doing here. I thought maybe they were in town for the Girl Scout cookie-making convention." It took every ounce of restraint to take the high road and keep my mouth shut. And these attitudes are less common among most professionals. Still, overhearing such a sexist remark was shocking and upsetting.

Catch the rest of the pros and cons after the break.