The Advancing Women in IT community is aimed at supporting women into and through IT careers and to inspire women to enter the sector as well as providing mentorship and networking opportunities.

CompTIA says, “The community is a vital information resource, provides mentorship and networking opportunities, develops member-driven initiatives and programs, is active in legislation involving women and careers, and is actively involved in pursing the overall objectives of the CompTIA – ECAP (education, certification, advocacy and philanthropy). Members of this group are women who are currently in or aspire to be in IT careers and men who support this mission.”

It’s hoped the community will help reverse the decline of women working in IT.

Sandy Ashworth will be chair.

CompTIA’s Brian Sherman writes in a blog post, “Research from the National Center for Women & Information Technology found that female IT industry employment reached its high point in 1991 at just 36% of the workforce. By 2009, that number dropped to 25 percent, and that negative trend shows no signs of changing. The latest numbers show a significant disparity in the number of undergraduate computer science degrees going to women— just 18% in 2009—compared to men. That’s especially discouraging when women garnered 57% of all undergraduate degrees that year.

The latest numbers show a significant disparity in the number of undergraduate computer science degrees going to women— just 18% in 2009—compared to men

Chair of the new community will be Sandy Ashworth, global director of channel relations and warranty for Unisys Corp.

Jean Mork Bredenson, president of Service 800, will act as vice chair.

The first community members meeting will take place at the CompTIA annual members’ meeting in April.

To learn more, the firm are running a webinar (hate the word), titled ‘Insights from a leader and her path to success’ with Marci Meaux, vice presidents of Cisco Systems’ sales enablement project.