"Women Narrow the Internet Gender Gap," a December 2005 headline proclaims. While the increase in female Internet users is certainly good news, the headline masks some troubling aspects of women's involvement with information technology (IT). Women are still seriously under-represented as developers of IT, and they are often not well served as IT users.

Despite the fact that technology is a rapidly growing field with occupations for computer systems analysts projected to grow 29%, computer software engineers projected to grow 44.6%, and network systems and data communications analysts projected to grow 53.4% from 2006 to 2016, the number of women going into these fields has decreased over the years.

In Women in the Labor Force: A Databook (2004, 2007), the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 2004 30.8% of mathematical and computer scientists were female, earning 81.1% of what their male counterparts earned, and 25.6% of computer programmers were female, earning 86.1% of what their male counterparts earned. In 2006 26.7% of employees in computer and mathematical fields were female, earning 84.7% of men’s earnings in those fields. This data shows that women are not keeping up with the growing IT market and their numbers are actually decreasing. In addition, women are still earning significantly less than men in the same position.

Further data from the Computing Research Association shows a similar trend. The Association writes that

While the field of computer science grew rapidly from 1966 to 2004, with 89 bachelor’s degrees granted in 1966 to over 57,000 in 2004, the percentage of women earning these degrees has not kept up with the trend. During this time period, female degree recipients grew by 50 percent and even increased in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields to be about 49% of recipients. Despite this, computer science is the only science field to see a fall in the share of its bachelor’s degrees granted to women between 1983 and 2002 with a drop from 36 to 27 percent. Freshmen women’s interest in CS as a major has fallen for the past several years and is now at its lowest point since the late 1970s.

Unquestionably, we must encourage more women and girls to study computer science and become the high-tech professionals for which there is so strong a demand. Equally important, however, is the quality of women's experience as users of IT. The headlines report that women are flocking to the Net in unprecedented numbers, but if we look further, we find that the Internet stampede includes relatively few economically disadvantaged women, minority women, or women in a number of countries outside the U.S. and Canada. These absences do not bode well for the future. As more and more of our information comes from online sources, women unable or unwilling to use information technology will have little power to shape that information and, in fact, are in danger of becoming the new illiterates, unprepared for the opportunities and challenges of the Information Age.