Women executives in the technology industry will share their personal success stories and impart some lessons for educators and the technology industry at a conference for the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE) this month in Washington, D.C.
Their discussion, called “Lessons Learned on the Pathway to Corporate Success,” is geared toward changing trends in the technology industry, and will interview key women executives on the paths that led to their current positions. The talk is also meant to impart lessons that can be applied to an education system that still struggles to recruit women to certain fields.
According to the press release, Mimi Lufkin, NAPE’s CEO, says, “Attendees will learn how they did it and what lessons they can take away to ensure that more barriers are overcome and underrepresented students become represented business professionals in the technical fields of the future.”
The panel features Joni Blakeslee, senior manager of Corporate Affairs at Cisco; Pat Elizondo, senior vice president at Xerox Corporation; and Monica McManus, vice president of Information Technology Services at Lockheed Martin Corporation. This discussion is one of the highlights of NAPE’s Professional Development Institute, a gathering for educators and advocates who want to provide equal opportunity in education and the workforce.
The discussion plays to recent statistics uncovered by a joint study about gender gaps in career preparation. NAPE promoted the report, a joint analysis by several women’s advocacy groups, which demonstrates inequality of education trends between male and female students. The report showed a gender gap in Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs. According to the study, female students remain primarily concentrated in traditionally female fields, such as human services, health science and education & training. These jobs are typically far lower-paying compared to jobs typically held by men.
On the other end of the scale, women were a minority of only 15 percent or less in secondary education programs clustered around manufacturing, transportation and logistics and architecture, which yield typically higher-paying jobs. Certain occupations, such as hospitality and tourism, marketing and public safety and law, tended to yield roughly equal numbers of men and women in both secondary and postsecondary education.
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