A few years ago, I wrote a column about a young girl who took to computers like a cat to catnip.

She was a wizard around software and was terrific programming in BASIC. I can report that she's now beginning college, and expects to study English literature.

According to an April 2000 report by the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, only 17 percent of students taking a 1999 computer science Advanced Placement test were girls. From the 1980s to the mid-1990s, the percentage of female undergraduate degrees in computer science declined from 37 to 28 percent.

It's no stretch to assert that females are not well represented in the computer or other high-tech industries. The particular report I cited, "Tech Savvy: Educating Girls in the New Computer Age," has two drums to bang: Women are declining in representation in the computer industry, and education is the way to reverse the trend. Like most reports and studies quoted in the general media, this report intended to incite action, or at least generate sympathetic thought.

It doesn't do much of either. Have you heard of it? In the unlikely event that you did, what did you think should be done about it?

About the only reaction I saw came from the Alliance for Childhood, which felt that schools are already overloaded with technology and that this report sends a bad message to girls about the necessity of them absorbing even more technology.

Not much goes uncontested these days, but in this case, the argument doesn't seem to generate heat. Perhaps that's because roughly half the population is ambivalent about women in high-tech industries, and the other half is divided.

The Way it Is

In almost all cases, technological development affects people both negatively and positively, and society must deal with the effects.

We started coming to grips with the effects of computer technology (and other high tech) about 10 years ago. It will probably take most of the century to work a few things out, but we will work on them. For good or ill, technology isn't going away. It's going to expand and become even more pervasive in our economies and our lives.

In a 21st-century economy, is there any place--at work, at home, on the road, even at play--where technology will not have some impact? Looking back at the effect of cars, planes, telephones, television and medicine in the last century, it can be said that people, even those in very remote places, are not living the same kinds of lives.

This fall, for the first time ever, an American president will give a keynote speech at a computer trade show, Comdex. He will talk about the "new economy" and the "digital divide."

This spring our stock markets (and by reflection, the world economy) did some nasty gyrations that got started when a judge ruled that an important corporation in the computer industry is an illegal monopoly. In late spring, research groups in the United States started predicting that we will soon have a shortfall of technical personnel of around 850,000 people. And whether you believe it fully or not, the Internet is changing the way the world does business.

Do women have a place in all this? Dumb question.

Next is a much tougher question: Why are fewer women entering high-tech industries?

The AAUW report cites a number of factors: Disenchantment with computer related jobs, the antisocial attitude of many high-tech people (guys = geeks), disinterest in the long preparation (especially math), the violent nature of computer games, the intensely materialistic nature (greed) of many high-tech people and companies.

Personally, I've seen examples of all these factors, and more. I'm not sure they add up to an explanation.

Lingering in the politically incorrect background are beliefs long held by both men and women that women are mentally different from men, and that math, science, and technology are just not for women.

This is a huge, contentious, and not fully conclusive debate that will continue to linger. More important, those who believe that women generally don't have the right aptitudes will make decisions--like educating, hiring, and promoting--based on that belief.

Perhaps this belief is no different from the belief that women have no place in business. I hope so. Women have entered the business workforce in great numbers. Many attitudes about women in business have changed.

However, "business" covers a very large territory. Math, science, and technology are much more specialized. For one thing, they require years of relatively disciplined learning.

There are huge areas in American culture--black, white and Latino--that exert tremendous peer pressure against those who consider higher education, much less commit to the study of math, science, and technology. These same cultural groups apply the pressure even more strongly to women.

I also don't recall ads that highlight the appeal of working in a laboratory, or show the glamour of computer programming. Our popular culture doesn't promote the sciences. In short, a lot of people in our society find little support for learning science and technology. This applies in and out of school.

Computing shows how coming to grips with technology is going to be very difficult. The technology will happen, but the effects and the reaction to it will vary. This is another way of saying that people's attitudes will run the gamut from embracing the technology to rejecting it entirely.

Those who reject a technology will often have a high profile, and their methods may include violence. Many technologies (genetics, computing, and medicine to name a few) will have interlocking relationships, a factor that will bring out active but sometimes contradictory resistance (as well as acceptance). I expect that women will continue to be divided in their opinions about their own role in technology.

I realize that in a roundabout fashion, I've been yelling, "Women, half the world's population, must be represented in all the world's activities." I'm inclined to support the AAUW report when it provides a list of things to do within the schools, like educate teachers to remove gender bias from technology subjects, or provide girls with clubs and social activities that promote the use of computers. But turning around the attitudes of a significant proportion of women will not be easy, and the effort will have to extend beyond the schools to elements that affect women in the broader society.

There is room for optimism. The economics of involving more women in technology are compelling. Because of labor shortages, most corporations will find it necessary to encourage women to join the technology labor pool, and find it profitable to employ them. While the AAUW report has hardly prompted a frenzy of activity, cumulative evidence from this and other reports will promote legislation, curriculum changes, and possibly even advertising campaigns.

During the 21st century, technology will continue to remove or decrease sex-based discrimination from many of the things we do, but some gender-specific occupations based on peculiar male or female musculature or body format will persist. Most occupations that are based on using knowledge and the mind (like all jobs in technology) will prove to be largely not gender-specific.

Who knows--one day we may need to worry about the overabundance of female hackers. Then again, maybe not. More women might have embraced technology by then, but that doesn't mean they have to embrace the worst of it. Vive la difference!

Contributing Editor Nelson King is ComputerUser's leading industry analyst.