The Victorian ICT for Women network is holding a bi-annual two-day IT careers expo — Go Girl, Go for IT — in June this year which is designed to help entice more female students in Years 8-11 to pursue a career in IT by exposing them to diverse roles in the industry.

As the father of two young girls, I often think ahead to what fields my children might pursue in their professional careers. Since my own career is devoted to high-tech media, I naturally think about the world of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and wonder if it's a path I would recommend to my daughters.

A not-for-profit group advocating there be more women working in information technology has just published a report that says recruiters for high-tech jobs should make sure there is at least one woman candidate for every job opening in IT.

Women have an integral role to play within the Australian information technology and communications industry, according to the Australian Computer Society (ACS).

Of the 135 people Fortune 500 employees targeted by social engineering hackers in a recent contest only five of them refused to give up any corporate information whatsoever. And guess what? All five were women.

Every stage in your career progress requires new skills. Sometimes, the knowledge you need to acquire is technical minutiae that can best be learned with a more experienced practitioner at your elbow. At other times, you need advice about developing business skills, or help deciding which new position to accept. Such advice can be acquired haphazardly, or it can come from a mentoring relationship.

Diversity (or lack thereof) in IT has been a hot topic in the news and among our clients in recent months. And it's true: IT departments are notorious for their lack of diversity, and the problem is only getting worse. Over the past few years, the number of women and underrepresented minorities (URMs) in IT has been dropping steadily. CIOs and other IT leaders can follow these simple steps to attract and retain women and URMs into their IT departments.

One-third of technical women wait to start families in order to advance their IT careers, according to new research on mid-career technical women. Nearly 10 percent forgo having children altogether--and despite these moves, women are still struggling to win executive roles in IT.