The Red King in Alice Through the Looking-Glass said he had to run very fast just to stand still. It's almost the same with Technology in this country. Just feeding into the Working Force the usual percentages of entrants would keep Technology stagnant. Increments are needed!

Increments can be provided not only from Americans but from nonAmericans with work visas. But here's how bad it was by the end of March, 2000. All of the work visas for the entire year had been exhausted, mostly from bringing in computer programmers and "peripherals".

More bad news! The percentage of women going into Computer Science reached a peak in 1986 AND HAS BEEN DECLINING SINCE!

It's a double-too-bad. Too bad for the industry and for women. An authority on this subject, Esther Dyson (daughter of the great physicist, Freeman Dyson) remarks in her 1998 book, A Design for Living in the Digital Age, that the computing field has a thinner "glass ceiling" than in any other industry. WOMEN HAVE THE BEST CHANCE OF ADVANCEMENT AT ALL LEVELS IN THE COMPUTING INDUSTRY. Yet where are the shetekers? to work beside the hetekers?

In a New York Times article, 4/23/00, Putting Technology Jobs on Women's Career Radar, James Schembari reported: "Women Work, an organization based in Washington, says there are 35 million stay-at-home moms in the United States, many of them eager to have jobs. And companies are eager to train them, computer skills or no.

"Jill Miller, director of Women Work, said it has set up programs with companies like Intel and Time Warner to ease women into high-technology jobs. 'Stay-at-home moms represent the largest pool of nontraditional candidates,' Miller said. 'The problem is trying to convince women to consider IT jobs.'

"Mills College in Oakland, Calif., has programs to train second-career professionals in computer science. Ellen Spertus, an assistant professor, said graduates have landed at start-ups and big companies like Apple Computer, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems."

Shetekers of The World, arise! You have only your "chains" to throw off!