High-tech startups typically use one of five types of employment models, reflecting their founders’ ideas about hiring and managing employees. These models can have long-lasting effects on firms and predict the trajectory of women’s representation among core technical staff. This research paper looks at the five models, identifies which are most congenial to hiring women, and points out correlations between competitive business models and meritocratic hiring. 

Encouragement increases self-efficacy, which is the belief in one’s ability to successfully perform a task. Because we are more likely to engage in tasks that we believe we can perform successfully, encouragement may be especially useful for attracting women to male-stereotyped fields such as computing. Simple though encouragement is, fewer than half of the faculty members in the average computer science department in the United States say they do it.

Women in IT: The Facts, sponsored by NCWIT's Workforce Alliance, brings together the latest findings from recent research on technical women. This report gives you:

• The best available data about the current state of affairs for technical women, in a single, easy-to-access resource
• A summary of the key barriers to women's participation in technology AND promising practices for addressing these barriers
• Data and tools to support your organization's change efforts
  

Women in scientific disciplines face challenges that range from institutionalized bias to differences in communication styles and a lack of female role models. Mentoring-in-a-Box: Women Faculty in Computing can help you start and sustain a successful mentoring relationship.