Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology

According to the essays and first-person narratives in this capable overview of women in the technology world, tech companies are not just failing to hire women into the C-suite%E2%80%94their culture prevents female employees at all levels from reaching their full potential. But female tech pioneers succeed against the odds. For example, Kim Polese, chairwoman of ClearStreet and the founding product manager for Java during its launch in 1995, contributes a personal essay on persistence. A chapter on education highlights the stigma facing women in STEM fields through the experiences of several women who persevered and now hold jobs in tech-related fields. The book hits especially hard on two modes of exclusion: lack of funding for female entrepreneurs, and lack of support for women's roles in the family and household. The book is a solid contribution to the growing popular literature on the subject. Although it covers a lot of the same ground as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In, it brings together more voices from the community of women working in tech. Wadhwa, a Stanford researcher who has been blogging on the topic for TechCrunch, argues that his natural next step was a book. He crowdsourced many of the contributions because "what right did I%E2%80%94a male%E2%80%94have to tell women how to solve their problems?" (Sept.)