Women lose ground in technology

During the boom years, the 10 biggest tech companies in Silicon Valley added nearly 20 000 women to their workforces. Five of the big 10 got onto Working Mother magazine`s list of best companies for women to work.

Now recent federal employment data on these companies shows that women made up only 32% of the workforce in 2000 (35% in 1996). Most were not managers or engineers, but office workers. The reasons? Women left to join start-ups or to launch their own businesses. The kinds of technical jobs that grew most in the late 1990s were ones for which women had not been groomed in large numbers (they accounted for only 27% of tech degrees, down from 37% in 1985) and a lack of role models (for instance, even HP has 70% male managers).

What have companies done to attract women? Cisco built a 65 000-square-foot day care centre, Sun offers adoption assistance for families, subsidised day care and a lactation programme, and HP pioneered job sharing more than a decade ago. [Mercury News]

Police in Italy have recorded what is thought to be the world`s first conviction thanks to a tip-off using an image sent by a mobile picture phone. Two thieves were jailed for six months last week after a shopkeeper became suspicious as they loitered outside his shop.

So concerned was the tobacconist, he snapped the two men with his new Nokia picture phone and promptly sent it to local police. The authorities realised that the two men were wanted in connection with a series of other raids and raced round to arrest the pair. [The Register]

Opera has announced the first Linux preview edition of Opera 7, the company`s next-generation browser, which recently shipped for Windows. The company stresses that the Linux version is a preview, so there are rough edges.

The company says most Linux-specific features of Opera 6.1 are gone "for now", DnD isn`t fully working, there are some focus-related problems and font set-up might be a bit selective. It does, however, come with the new e-mail and news client. You can download it here.

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