by, for, and about women in science, technology, engineering, & math

• On Twitter, check out the Anita Borg Institute’s list of programs supporting technical women
• BlogHer posts a list of 10 great technical blogs by women; Geek Feminism readers share more in the comments. Know another great blog not mentioned? (Maybe your own blog?) Share it in the comments here!
• UK blog Women in Technology posts about the growing number of female science teachers
• Microsoft’s Imagine Cup featured several all-female teams, and one of those teams, Mirror Vita from Thailand, took first place in the Digital Media category. Congratulations Mirror Vita!
• Facebook is offering a scholarship to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing for university students majoring in CS! If I were still in school I’d be all over this.
• The fantastic Amanda Hess of the Sexist enlists feminist geek Courtney Stoker to help answer a man’s question about how to make his corner of geekdom more accessible to women.
• Mashable posts a list of 5 organizations helping women get ahead in tech — including the Ruby on Rails workshops for women, which I know are awesome because I TA’d for them when they came to Boston. (Also, it looks like Mashable changed the title of this article from when I saw it a few days ago, which is nice; the original “Why Women Programmers Aren’t a Fad” was a little off-putting in its implications. I’m a person, not a fad!)

• Women 2.0 is running Women 2.0 Labs this summer — a 5-week program in San Francisco to share support, resources, and feedback with startup developers.

• The Anita Borg Institute is now accepting nominations for an award for the top company for technical women — recognizing companies that have excelled at recruiting, retaining, and providing a good working environment for technical women.

• Allyson Kapin at FastCompany blogs about the many structural problems that lead to male-run startups receiving much more prominence and success with venture capitalists than female-run startups.

• Gail Carmichael at the Female Perspective of Computer Science posts about applying general pedagogical techniques to computer science education.

• Sociological Images discusses a cartoon examining the early stereotyping and nudging in the marketing of children’s toys.

• The Age has an article about scientific evidence for sex biases; they also include some interesting anecdotes from two transgender scientists (a man and a woman) who talk about their differing experiences in the scientific community between being perceived as male and female.

• Geek Feminism posts about girls’ experiences with tinkering, and several women share their experiences about whether/how they were allowed to tinker with technology as a kid (and how their experiences differed from their brothers, where applicable).

• ReclaimPrivacy.org offers a GPL’d bookmarklet that will check your Facebook settings for privacy holes you might not have been aware of and help you plug them if you want.

• ThinkGeek has started a new line of Heroine t-shirts with cool designs of scientific and technical women on them — the first to be released are Ada Lovelace and Marie Curie. Awesome!

• Sigh. Yet again, we need instructions from a third party on how to prevent Facebook from sharing personal information without our permission

• Gail Carmichael at the Female Perspective of Computer Science responds to the contention that women in computing groups might not be useful – Gail’s post reflects on the enjoyable and useful experiences she’s had with the women in engineering group she helped start at her school

• Under the Microscope celebrates Earth Day by profiling oceanographer Sylvia Earle, conservation biologist Dee Boersma, and geographer/glaciologist Julienne Stroeve

• The Anita Borg Institute is seeking nominations for the Change Agent Awards, which recognize women working in technology in developing countries

• Next weekend, the Museum of Science in Boston will be featuring several women in science and engineering as speakers

• An inspiring Flickr group features images of techy women at conferences or doing other techy things

• She’s Geeky unconference is coming up in the Bay Area!
• Also in the Bay Area, a competition for teams of high school girls programming Android and iPhone applications
• In Boston, the LibrePlanet Conference 2010 is coming up in March — RSVP now to reserve a spot!
• Check out Engineer Your Life — a website aimed at high school girls and promoting careers in engineering
• This story about research showing girls may be less interested in computer science if it’s associated with a “geeky” environment has been being passed around a lot this week. What do you think? Is this a legitimate explanation? Personally, I’ve always found geeky environments to be a plus — but then, I’m already a programmer, so my personal experience says more about how women do go into technology than why they don’t.
• Under the Microscope profiles several women who are playing important roles in the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference
• This diagram of the many species of geeks is kind of cool, but it’s also depressing how sexism in geek culture shows up even in such a playful context — one of the types of geek is “IT guy” (of course, there’s no “IT gal”), and all of the “geek heroes” are men, while several of the “geek obsessions” are women (taking their place among “stuff” like aliens, robots, and movies).
• Mark Shuttleworth is stepping down as CEO of Canonical — current COO Jane Silber will take his place
• Gawker posts a guide to the new Facebook privacy settings and an update on the old privacy settings you can no longer use
• Is Alice in Wonderland really a complex allegory about then-new types of mathematics?
• The Free Press Action Fund posts a map of where your representatives stand on Net Neutrality, and how to contact them about it
• And, it’s almost the weekend. Periodic Table of Beer!

Thanks to my twitter feed for sharing several of these links!

As always, please share your links of interest in the comments or in a blog post of your own!