Women in IT get boost from WITI.

  Women in Technology International (WITI) offers everything from scholarships for members to Gender Gap Assessment Tools for companies. In 1989 Carolyn Leighton founded an organization to support and accelerate women's advancement in technology. She named it Women In Technology International (WITI). It is the recognized leader and only worldwide organization that is exclusively dedicated to women working in and pursuing careers in technology.

Today there are over 100 corporate partners and 30,000 plus individuals who actively participate in the organization's goals.

Carolyn is proud of WITI's growth. "We provide inspiration, support, service and education for women in the corporate arena, as entrepreneurs, and in academia. We now have 32 regional chapters in the U.S., Canada and Australia, with rapid expansion planned worldwide."

Consultis supported WITI this spring at their first annual Technology Summit in Silicon Valley, California as a Silver Sponsor.

"We recognize the importance of what WITI is doing to advance issues. The need for better solutions has become even more compelling since a recent court ruling (Kolstad vs. American Dental Association-1999) established that companies which have written policies and procedures in place and implement programs to support these policies will have a greater chance of avoiding punitive damages in sexual harassment and anti-discrimination lawsuits.

The software makes it easy to generate reports and provides a menu of easy-to-use, web-based flexible options. It is password protected to assure a safe and secure environment, and the self-assessment portion takes only 20 minutes to complete. The software can also be customized to adapt to different cultures, as well as various corporate culture issues.

"As companies increasingly compete for better ways to attract and retain women, gender issues and how organizations manage those issues is becoming increasingly significant. Establishing metrics and benchmarks for dealing careers for women in IT, said Barbara Dettman Fleming, founder and CEO of Consultis. "Further, similar to the Open Door Foundation (ed. note: The National Association of Computer and Consultant Businesses' foundation to provide scholarships to deserving computer sciences students), we strive to help others enter and thrive in our industry."

To help bridge the Gender Gap, WITI recently collaborated with experts at Human Facets and Professional Mentoring to develop a software tool called "The Gender Gap Assessment Tool". It comes at a time when companies are growing increasingly concerned about the exodus of women from corporate America due to glass ceiling issues. The tool is designed to measure gender perceptions, development and advancement of women, organizational effectiveness and benchmarks for gender with the development and advancement of women and women's experience of those environments is essential to being able to effectively attract, develop and retain women," said WITI's Carolyn Leighton.

Helen Turnbull, President of Human Facets is a highly respected international diversity consultant. "During 18 years of working on diversity, and gender issues in particular, it has become increasingly clear to me that organizations need a way to measure their progress and how it is impacting the bottom line. The Gender Gap Assessment tool provides organizations with an opportunity to not only measure progress, but will give feedback about behaviors and attitudes which will improve their chances of retaining women," states Turnbull, from Human Facets.

Studies project there are more than one million IT positions unfilled today. A 1999 Meta Group, Inc. study projects the deficit will increase to nearly 2 million by 2002. That makes it is clear that there is an important opportunity for women to make a major contribution, and WITI is posed to help.

For more information, go to: www.witi.com