On July 23, 1999, on the eve of the new millennium, Eileen Collins broke through a major glass ceiling on her way to breaking free of Earth's atmosphere. Having already made history as the first female Space Shuttle pilot, in 1995, Col. Collins now led STS-93 Columbia and its mission to deploy the Chandra X-Ray Observatory as the first female shuttle commander in the history of NASA. Ambition, hard work and timing enabled Collins to excel and prove that women could lead in such a male-dominated field. According to Valerie Neal, curator of the space history department of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the doors for women with a passion for STEM were opening, and institutions like the military services academies and NASA itself were finally accepting women.

Twenty-nine percent of women in the IT field experience an unwelcoming work environment to women and minorities, compared to only seven percent of men who feel the same way, according to the 2016 Harvey Nash Women in Technology survey. Survey results reveal long hours, high pressure and poor work/life balance impact men and women fairly equally. However, when it comes to opportunities for advancement, more than one-third of women (37 percent) cite a challenge in this area, compared to just one-fifth (20 percent) of men. Further, the more tenure a woman has in IT, the more likely she is to list lack of advancement opportunities as a major challenge.

From groups that teach young women of color to code to those that provide networking and professional development opportunities for groups defined by their gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, or other factors, there's no shortage of efforts to increase the numbers of underrepresented people in specific sectors. And while such initiatives and groups are admirable, many are relatively small. With diversity issues so pronounced-especially in the technology sector-can such targeted initiatives and "safe spaces" truly be effective at moving the diversity needle?

It is eight years since journalist and software activist Suw Charman-Anderson founded Ada Lovelace Day, aiming to raise the profile of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics and celebrate their achievements. The day is named after Lord Byron's daughter Ada, a mathematician who worked with Charles Babbage to create and program the world's first general purpose computer, the analytical engine, creating the precursor to modern programming. Eight years is an age in Silicon Valley - so how much tech progress has there been in tech companies themselves since Ada Lovelace Day began in 2009?

Women make up a smaller and smaller fraction of those with high incomes, the closer you get to the top. Women have been increasing their representation in the top 10 per cent, but progress has been much less at the very top 0.1 per cent. Tax data from eight countries since the 1980s or earlier was used by researchers to look for the first time at the gender composition of those with top incomes from all sources, not just from earnings.

Over the last year, Netflix has been working to encourage girls to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) career fields with their original show Project Mc2.
The show, premiering its third season next week, features McKeyla McAlister and her friends as they work as secret operatives for an organization called NOV8 (pronounced ''innovate'') using STEM fields to protect the world. Each girl is a valuable member of the team, contributing her own specialty that reflects her personality. McKeyla McAlister is a problem solver and leader, Adrienne Attoms is a culinary chemist, Bryden Bandweth is a tech genius, Camryn Coyle is an engineer extraordinaire, Devon D'Marco is a creative artist, and Ember Evergreen has a green thumb. The show also has an accompanying website where viewers can complete their own missions for NOV8, and even download experiments that they can try at home.

Cyber security experts assembled at the Splunk 2016 conference to discuss the gender gap in cyber security and what can be done to solve it. The percentage of women working in the technology sector has not changed much in recent years, remaining at about 16%. But, with the need for skilled workers in the sector growing, there is a danger that ruling out half the population when selecting candidates will make the problem worse.

For more than a decade, educators, business leaders and policymakers have talked about STEM - an acronym that stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics - but a new study suggests that at least one increasingly important field is being left out of STEM education, and it is vital to our nation's students and economic prosperity. ''The Case for Improving U.S. Computer Science Education,'' a recent report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a nonprofit science and technology think tank, is compelling. Co-authors Adams Nager and Robert D. Atkinson note that computer science, which they call ''the most important STEM field for a modern economy,'' has ''the fewest number of high school students taking its classes and by far has the most room for improvement.'' Computer science, they say, is still secondary to what they call the ''biology, chemistry, physics framework'' that has been central to high school science education since the late 19th century. Therein lies the problem.

Link to the STEM article where Women in STEM fields met with members of the executive branch Wednesday and agreed on the importance of female networks.

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