Melissa Rygh and Annette Jones are somewhat distinct among their peers. As co-owners of the Anchorage information technology firm Network Business Systems, Rygh and Jones find themselves in the minority in a field that has actually seen the number of women decline over the years.
According to the National Center for Women and Information Technology, women comprise only 26 percent of the tech workforce. And that number is down considerably since the 1980s, when the new age of smaller, faster and more affordable computers began transforming the technology industry and almost every other aspect of life.
In the mid-'80s, according to a Google study released in May 2014, women earned 37 percent of all computer science degrees. Today that number has plummeted to just 18 percent. Women, it seems, have been turning away from the technology and computer industry at a time when it is seeing its quickest and most significant growth.
Both Jones and Rygh said that their mothers provided strong positive influences in their lives by not pressuring them to fit into gender stereotypes. And they say there are benefits to being a woman in a male-dominated field, especially when it comes to so-called "soft skills" like team management and client relationships.
"Much of it is listening -- listening to what they need, not just making a decision about a cool technology to implement just for the sake of it being new and innovative," Rygh said.
Rygh's and Jones' business employs 30 people (29 of whom are men) and does about $10 million in annual revenue. They work with clients large and small, from the state of Alaska to mom-and-pop stores. One of their challenges: matching the right IT technician with the right client.
"The techs are very different as far as what they enjoy and what they are good at," Jones said. "And we like to match the sort of environments that the techs like to support and are interested in with the clients."
While the number of women in the technology industry is beginning to climb, it has been a slow process, according to the NCWIT. And in Alaska schools, girls continue to be an underrepresented minority of students in computer and other tech-based classes. The NCWIT said just two Alaska high school girls took an advanced placement computer science exam in 2013. The statistics for minorities are even more sobering: No African-American or Hispanic students took the exam Alaska last year, according to the education information tracking organization College Board.
The NCWIT said it is trying to get more Alaska high school girls to apply for one of its 1,800 Aspirations in Computing Awards, which give the winning students access to the NCWIT peer-to-peer network, cash prizes, computers and help with college education. So far, only one or two Alaska girls have applied each year, according to the NCWIT.
Going beyond education, getting investors for a woman-led business can be a challenge in the U.S. According to Harvard Business School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, only 6.7 percent of venture capital funding goes to woman-owned businesses.
"Venture capitalists generally don't invest in women's IT companies," Rygh said. "I don't know why. I think there is some sort of stigma out there."
Rygh and Jones said their biggest concern is getting qualified people to fill job positions in their company, regardless of race or sex. And that is a problem faced by the IT industry as a whole.
According to CODE.org, a technology education group, there are currently three times as many jobs in computer science as there are people in the pipeline to fill them. "It's pretty scary," said Ruth Farmer, NCWIT's chief strategy and growth officer.
In Alaska, CODE.org said, there are 902 current job openings in computing jobs and only 20 new computer science graduates. The number of computing jobs is growing at 3.2 times the rate of other professions in Alaska, CODE said.
And making sure that future computer and technology employees are as diverse as possible is important because it provides for the highest levels of both innovation and practicality in new products.
"When voicemail was first introduced, it hung up on a female voice because the team that built it was all male and they tested it on themselves," Farmer said. "So when it went to market, it hung up on female voices. That's a flaw that could have been avoided."
Based on the numbers, the technology industry seems wide open for employee growth and success as it needs more workers than are currently available. It is also an industry ripe for people looking to change careers.
"You have to be a problem solver," Jones said. "Mechanics make incredibly good IT people because they are good at troubleshooting and think linearly."
But Rygh and Jones have advice for anyone who thinks math and computer science are the only courses of study required to get a good IT job.
"Take a lot of communication courses and focus on writing, because behind every computer there is a person," Rygh said. "So it doesn't matter what you can do to a computer or a machine of some sort -- you still have to interact with a person."
Contact Sean Doogan at sean@alaskadispatch.com.