[go geeky girls!]

At any press conference plugging sci-tech, it's an all-balls affair. Fat chance you'll find many women in the male-dominated world of inventing and reporting on new technology. But beneath the surface, gender equality in this area is quietly gaining ground.

Apparent to insiders in the industry, female geeks are finding a home in their various pursuits, from blogging to engineering to tech journalism. Press conferences today might not reflect that upswing; it takes some digging to find the women who are bringing technology to the masses.

ABC News predicted an instant page-view spike for its online home when it lured vidcaster Amanda Congdon from her online show, Rocketboom, to report on Web happenings for ABCNews.com. Bringing a humorous perspective to tech news, Congdon is one of the first female crossover stars from the Web-video era.

But she's not the only one. Closer to home, Toronto's Amber MacArthur is doing triple duty in the tech arena: she's Citytv's new media specialist, she hosts the weekly vidcast CommandN, and she also co-hosts net@nite, a podcast on all things geekified. She hopes her 24/7 work in the digital world will inspire other women to do the same.

"Sometimes people think that a woman doesn't know her tech stuff," she says. "But as soon as you show them that you do, you should just hold your head high and support other women who do the same."

From Now Magazine - Toronto.

Now I can surreptitiously slip in a link to the NLab Women, Business & Blogging conference.