Appointing more women to corporate boards has long been viewed as a good thing for a company's performance and for society as a whole. But gender diversity among directors carries another benefit, 2015 proxy filings show: a bigger paycheck for the company's chief executive. An analysis of C.E.O. pay at 100 large companies last year by Equilar, a compensation research firm in Redwood City, Calif., found that companies with greater gender diversity on their boards paid their chief executives about 15 percent more than the compensation dispensed by companies with less diverse boards. In dollars, this translated to approximately $2 million more in median pay last year among these companies.

In 2014, Google was one of the first tech companies to publicly release its diversity numbers. But when it did, the public found out that inside the Google Complex it really wasn't that diverse at all. Nearly everyone who worked there was a White male, with the company's racial diversity including only 3% Hispanic and 2% Black employees among its ranks. And in tech roles, the numbers were even worse; only 2% Hispanic and 1% Black. For 2015, the numbers in these racially ethnic categories had not changed at all. Since then, the tech giant has been putting a lot of initiatives in place to foster diversity and inclusion both internally and externally. In 2015, the tech giant invested $150 million towards those initiatives, which includes training hiring and recruitment. One such initiative is embedding Google Engineers at Howard, Hampton, Fisk, Spelman and Morehouse schools to teach computer science and also coach students on applying and interviewing for jobs. More recently, Google partnered its Made with Code program with Black Girls Rock! to create the Girls Rock! Tech Summit, where 100 teen girls participated in coding workshops and learned about STEAM careers. One student was also selected to receive a $10,000 scholarship from Google at the Black Girls Rock! event, with an additional $20,000 commitment toward her Computer Science Education. Ebony.com reached out to Google's Director of Diversity and Inclusion, Yolanda Mangolini, to learn more about what the company is doing to improve its diversity numbers.

By now, you've probably heard a few of the disappointing numbers related to women and technology. Facts like 60% of females in Silicon Valley have been sexually harassed, or that women hold shockingly few board seats compared to their male counterparts, or women make up less than 20% of early stage investments. These statistics affect more than just females. The lack of women and minorities in technology, in corporate leadership roles, in board seats, and in founding positions at startups creates a lag in mentors and role models, in innovation, and in product development. It even impacts the bottom line. Girls in Tech provide women with the intellectual ammunition they need to break down brick walls with startup boot camps and practical workshops. And we believe in mentoring future generations to change the landscape for women for decades to come. What started as a nonprofit to empower and enable women to succeed in business and entrepreneurship has transformed into a global movement.

Colleges and universities looking to diversify STEM faculty should consider talented women in industry, government or private research, write Coleen Carrigan and Eve Riskin. One common strategy for increasing diversity in STEM departments is to hire talented women away from other universities. But this zero-sum approach fails to increase the number of female STEM professors nationwide. It also ignores another universe of potentially stellar female faculty: women who left academe after getting their doctorates to pursue science or engineering careers in industry, government or private research.

Who's making waves in the world's most influential industry? Meet the powerhouses changing the way you communicate, date, get around, and even do laundry.

For female students pursuing STEM degrees, the gender barrier may not always be explicit, but it's pervasive. Through increasing the visibility of mentors and encouraging girls to try STEM activities early on, many feel the gender barrier can be dismantled. USA TODAY College reached out to five women pursing STEM degrees at institutions across the country to hear their experiences of being a woman in a male-dominated major.

The Council of Europe Transversal Programme on Gender Equality aims to increase the impact and visibility of gender equality standards, supporting their implementation in member states through a variety of measures, including gender mainstreaming and action in a number of priority areas. The Council of Europe Gender Equality Strategy (2014-2017), a balanced, flexible and focused document, which builds upon the strengths, specificities and the added value of the Council of Europe, will guide the activities of the organisation and the Transversal Programme in the area of gender equality for the next four years. The overall goal of the strategy is to achieve the advancement and empowering of women and the effective realisation of gender equality in the Council of Europe member states through activities around five strategic objectives: combating gender stereotypes and sexism; preventing and combating Violence against Women; guaranteeing equal access of women to justice; achieving balanced participation of women and men in political and public decision-making; achieving gender mainstreaming in all policies and measures.

Best Buy is no longer an old boys club - at least not at the top. For the first time, women make up the majority of the leadership team at the Richfield-based company, the nation's largest electronics retailer. That would be a notable feat for any corporation these days, but it's particularly remarkable for one that is entrenched in the notoriously male-dominated technology world. Best Buy reached the turning point last month when Trish Walker was hired from Accenture to become its president of services, including the Geek Squad. With her hiring, six of the 10 executives who report to chief executive Hubert Joly are women.

Hertha Marks Ayrton became the first woman to present her own work to the U.K.'s Royal Society when she stood in front of the scientific academy in 1904 and read ''The Origin and Growth of Ripple Marks.'' Until then, scientists were baffled by the creation of ridges in sand when a wave washes over a beach. To celebrate Ayrton's scientific discoveries and victories over discrimination, Google has honored the British engineer, mathematician, physicist and inventor with a Doodle, on the 162nd anniversary of her birth. In addition to unlocking the mystery of ripples, Ayrton also became and expert on electric arcs, widely used in lighting at the time.

It may be hard to believe, given the wealth of attention paid to the low numbers of women in the industry and the obstacles they're having to overcome. But the signs of change are everywhere if you're paying close enough attention. Women now make up 60 percent of college graduates, and many more of them are graduating with tech-friendly degrees. (Women are exceeding at elite institutions particularly, and now account for one-third of Stanford's undergraduate engineering students, as well as one-third of Stanford's graduate engineering students.) Though women are making slow inroads at venture firms - according to CrunchBase datapublished earlier this week, just 7 percent of the partners are women at the top 100 venture firms - women are increasingly finding paths around today's guard.