A new database is fighting the poor visibility of women in STEM by offering female professionals as speakers, panelists, experts, course leaders and advocates for diversity and equity. Women from across the world continue to be underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). In the U.S.- where women make up nearly half of the workforce - they were merely 26 percent of the STEM workforce in 2011 according to the United States Census Bureau. President Obama's White House worked hard to expand the participation of women, girls and minorities in STEM fields by encouraging mentoring; initiating Let Girls Learn, a program to ensure that adolescent girls worldwide reach secondary school; and retaining women in science careers by investing in affordable childcare. Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a grassroots organization called 500 Women Scientists was established to help propel and maintain the momentum of such efforts. Its founders and members pledged to speak up for science and for women. They would do this by boosting scientific literacy through public engagement, strengthening the role of science in society, and changing the face of what a scientist looks like. More than 20,000 people, mostly women but also a couple thousand men, signed the pledge.

By several measures, the tech world is stagnating or even moving backwards when it comes to achieving greater equity for women and people of color. According to LinkedIn's research, only 28% of software engineers are women, and that number has only gone up 3% over 15 years. Even worse, women in leadership roles has risen a measly 2.3%. The numbers are even more bleak in the funding world: Between 1999 and 2013, there was a 40% drop in female VCs, according to Babson's. Furthermore, only 3% of VC funds have black and Latinx people on their teams. In 2017, women-led companies made up 4.4% of all VC deals, a 2% increase in 10 years, according to Pitchbook. For women of color, the numbers are utterly dismal: Only 0.2% of venture capital went to startups founded by black women, according to ProjectDiane. The nonprofit, Women Who Tech, aims to change the ratio in tech. Through our Women Startup Challenges and other work, they've worked with 1,700-plus women-led ventures, numerous investors, and engineers. One big lesson that's emerged is that the tech culture has relied on pattern recognition for too long.

The Student of Vision Abie Award honors young women dedicated to creating a future where the people who imagine and build technology mirror the people and societies for which they build. Undergraduate or graduate students may self-nominate for the Student of Vision Abie Award. All submitting participants must be 18 years or older on September 26, 2018. Recipients are honored by the technical women's community at the Grace Hopper Celebration. The award includes a prize of $7,000.

If you are interested in speaking at the 2018 Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC 18) in September, at GHC, they make sure the voices of community are heard. Don't miss the chance to learn more about your field, network with new people, and discover how you can further your career. Check out our tracks, speaking formats, and requirements to learn more.

Maryland Center for Women in Computing is pleased to present the Diversity in Computing Summit, a one-day workshop designed for all advocates of underrepresented groups in computing fields. Through informative workshops and dynamic speakers, we will emphasize inclusive computing - efforts that address the positive impact that underrepresented groups have and will continue to have on the future of technology.

The new book from John D. Couch, Apple's first vice president of education, details the company's vision for the role of technology. The book provides an inside look at the company's vision for the role technology has played in education, and the opportunities and obstacles that lie ahead.

The evidence is clear: A more diverse workforce leads to higher revenues and more creative teams. But despite funnelling millions of dollars into well-intentioned diversity initiatives, white men remain overrepresented in the industry compared to the private sector as a whole. The issue is difficult to address for a variety of reasons, including the fact that ''the diversity problems of each race are different,'' Buck Gee, an executive advisor at the nonprofit Ascend, told TechRepublic. "In Silicon Valley for blacks and Hispanics, the basic problem is getting in the door. The problem with Asian Americans in Silicon Valley is upper mobility to management. You need different strategies for each race, and you can't just throw it in as a diversity program, because not all diversity programs are apt for all the races or genders.''

In 2016, Slack made headlines when their CEO, Stewart Butterfield, sent four black female engineers to accept TechCrunch's award for fastest-rising startup. Foregoing the stage himself, Butterfield was lauded for celebrating diversity in tech. What few people heard, however, is that Butterfield hadn't asked those women to accept the award - that was orchestrated by Erica Joy Baker, then a senior engineer at Slack, and one of the women on stage that night. This is just one of the highly successful efforts Baker has made to promote women and people of color in tech. As one of the few black female leaders in her industry - she's now the senior engineering manager at crowdfunding platform Patreon - she is unafraid to attack the status quo.

UCLA duo aims to make the next generation of programmers and coders more diverse. Jane Margolis, senior researcher at UCLA's Center X, brings her firsthand experience of inequities in a technical field to her work on bringing computer science education to all students. Margolis emphasizes that her work around computer science has always been about inequality and how fields become segregated. As a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University in the mid-1990s, she was asked to conduct a research study on the lack of female students in what was one of the top computer science departments in the nation. Her findings resulted in her first book, ''Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing,'' which she co-wrote with Allan Fisher. Margolis' work led to more research funded by the National Science Foundation, on why so few African-Americans, Latinos and females were learning computer science in Los Angeles public high schools. The findings revealed the disparities in learning opportunities that fell along race and socio-economic lines, resulting in her second book, ''Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing,'' with she authored along with Rachel Estrella, Joanna Goode, Jennifer Jellison Holme and Kim Nao. In response to the findings, Margolis and colleagues founded the Exploring Computer Science curriculum and teacher professional development program, which is housed within UCLA Center X's Computer Science Project.

Businesses need to go beyond paying lip service to gender equality if we are to make meaningful change. The current 'MeToo' moment is a rare inflection point for women in society, as we find ourselves in a broad and potentially game-changing conversation about how women are faring in the workplace and beyond. Everyone - from investors, board members, business leaders and employees to customers and suppliers of businesses large and small - is aligned on the issue that the pace of change and the results are simply not acceptable. Despite the headlines and the hashtags, leaders and organizations are asking themselves the tough questions: ''Are we making progress or creating an echo chamber?'' When it comes to gender equality, the data remains stark, according to the World Economic Forum's 2017 Gender Gap Report, which captures the the magnitude of gender-based disparities across economies, education, health and political engagements.