SANTA CLARA, California -- Karenann Terrell has been in the auto industry for more than 20 years, and has some advice for women working in male-dominated fields.
"Publicly our face needs to be unity," said Terrell, who joined DaimlerChrysler after a 20-year career at GM. "There are enough barriers as women in technology to tear us down."
This year's Women in Technology International Professional Women's Summit in Santa Clara drew a crowd of mostly women attendees from both the new and old economy who came for one reason: to meet other women in technology.
Forums like WITI's Silicon Valley summit allow women to access other high-level executives they might not otherwise get a chance to meet.
"I would not miss coming here because of the opportunity to meet other women and hear their strategies," said Terrell, who is director of e-connect for DaimlerChrysler. "Not on dealing with men, that's not what this place is about -- in dealing with business, success and professional and personal development areas."
Women have innate qualities such as collaborating, juggling tasks, prioritizing and empathy that make them natural leaders, said Radha Basu, CEO of Support.com in a keynote address.
"It's not the time to be wallflowers and wimps, it's time to step up, to be calculated about what risks you're going to take," Basu urged the crowd.
"Women who think outside the box do have a lot of opportunities," Terrell said.
But some wonder whether the number of women in technology will decline with the current economic downturn in the industry.
"Women have the right skills, and yet right now is the time that the pipeline might suffer," Terrell said. "But the pipeline is primed with women -- entry, middle and now moving to executive levels. It's hard not to be impressed with the number of women in senior leadership roles in the tech fields."
Attendees say there's still a need for women-only events like WITI's conference to drive more women to the industry.
"The need for people in the industry has accelerated at an unparalleled rate," Terrell said. "And the only place to go to move from a mechanical to an electrical into a software world is into untapped populations of people. The penetration of women into those fields right now is way indexed low."
That's why companies like WITI and DaimlerChrysler focus on bringing women in at the entry level and mentoring them in middle school for science and math, she said.
"Focusing on young people and young women as an untapped market is what we are all looking for. It's the talent pool," Terrell said.
While women are generally more comfortable in fields like computer science and biology, the numbers are still relatively low in the physical sciences, said Darlene Solomon, director of Agilent's Life Science Technologies Lab.
"The numbers are certainly better in some fields. In biology and chemistry we see a much greater percentage of women going into graduate school," Solomon said. "But I still get the sense that at elementary schools and middle schools, there's a lot of women choosing not to go into math and science."
"There's still a sense that there's a need that exists (for conferences like WITI's) that hasn't gone away," Solomon said. "I think that there are needs in terms of having women being centered on what they want to do and what they can do that a conference like this is a shot in the arm."
