For the past four years, NASA has hosted the Space Apps Challenge, one of the biggest hackathons on the planet. Last year, 14,264 people gathered in 133 locations for 48 to 72 hours to create apps using NASA's data. A team in Lome, Togo, built a clean water mapping app; one in Bangalore, India, created a desktop planetarium; another in Pasadena, California, created a pocket assistant for astronauts. This year's hackathon happens this upcoming weekend. While NASA has been able to attract participants from all corners of the globe, it has consistently struggled to get women involved. NASA is working very hard to change this. "The attendance is generally 80% male," says Beth Beck, NASA's open innovation project manager, who runs the Space Apps Hackathon. "It's more everyman than everywoman."

Gender plays a complicated role in the hiring of computer science tenure-track faculty members, of which on average only about 15% are women, according to a study presented today at the peer-reviewed International World Wide Web Conference in Montreal, Canada, and posted on the arXiv preprint server in February. Gender bias in hiring is not blatant, the authors found, but gender-associated differences in productivity, postdoctoral experience, and institutional prestige of degree-granting institutions - which are likely due to bias against women during the training process - largely account for the observed gender imbalance in computer science faculty hiring networks.

Story about Helena Price's photography project ''Techies'' shares the stories 100 members of the tech community.

The tech industry's education pipeline problem is well established. Companies often cite too few qualified college graduates who are women or people of color as a primary reason for the industry's diversity issues. But a new report suggests they may be looking in the wrong place. According to the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), tech employers could more quickly boost their gender diversity by hiring women in lower paying jobs. IWPR's report found that some IT jobs, such as web developers and computer system analysts, share similar skills to some occupations predominantly held by women. And with a little creative thinking, tech companies could more rapidly close their gender gap by recruiting women who work as librarians, clinical lab technicians, or in human resources.

Dr. Jennifer Doudna was named a 2016 L'Oreal-UNESCO Za zenske v znanosti Laureate for her groundbreaking work that is revolutionizing genetics. Watch here to learn more about Dr. Doudna and her extraordinary research!

''Women in tech'' was a common phrase at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival this year. But there's reason to think that focusing on women as an anomaly in the community might hurt more than it helps. After SXSW cancelled two panels about gender in the gaming community last fall, provoking an uproar, the Interactive conference attempted to atone with an Online Harassment Summit on Mar. 12. But the discussions turned out to be ''just one more place for men to ignore women,'' as The Verge reported. The poorly-attended panels were held across the river from the center of SXSW action-a geographical siloing that serves as an apt metaphor for the problem with the ways we talk about women in tech. Thankfully, one panel sought to reframe the conversation by focusing on the long history of women in computer science. Documentarian Robin Hauser Reynolds, who directed and produced the new documentary CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap, appeared on a panel at the Capital One House at SXSW along with Nathan Ensmenger, an associate professor at Indiana University's School of Informatics and Computing. Together they discussed the social and cultural history of computing-with a special emphasis on the fact that the field is dominated by white men not by accident, but by design.

Anita Brearton and Sheryl Schultz have advice for other post-50 female entrepreneurs: Don't give up, no matter how many ridiculous, insulting things are said to you by the mostly male venture capitalists you will inevitably encounter. The two businesswomen, both entrepreneurs and both in their late 50s, should know. For the past year, as they looked for investors for their latest venture, Brearton and Schultz heard all kinds of unhelpful suggestions.

Link to Dr. Claire D'Andola's article discussing what is the current status of gender parity in the sciences? And why is it important to discuss it? Herein, we wish to contribute towards a constructive discussion of the issues surrounding gender disparity in science as well as providing practical information about the facts of the issues involved and details of organizations and programs that provide support for women who wish to pursue a scientific career.

Analyzing census job and wage data, a new report ranks cities with the best environment for women in tech positions.

When Google and Intel first released their employment statistics in 2014, the topic of diversity was nowhere as elevated as it is today in corporate circles. Silicon Valley and its many companies from large tech giants down to startups are under the diversity and inclusion microscope. Why all of the emphasis on diversityDemographically our country is changing with the rise of the ''New Majority'' - all the people who are considered to be minorities. 43 percent of millennials and 50 percent of newborns are non-white, according to a study by Pew Research Center. The U.S. has always been a nation in flux, but between now and 2060, rarely will we experience another shift in culture that will literally change the face of the country. Soon, diversity will no longer be an option. It will be a fact of life. Smart business leaders will understand this importance not only because of who their future customers or clients may be, but more so who is going to make up their future workforce. Silicon Valley is starting to recognize the significance of this matter, but it's struggling with how to solve diversity problems.