14 DAY TRIAL // Topless model and former miss Australia Erin McNaught came last week into focus not because of some mundane task of exposing her scantly clothed body but because the association with the world's largest software company, Microsoft. McNaught was artificially turned by the media into a Microsoft poster girl designed to sex up the computer industry and attract both boys and girls to the geek/chick IT environment.
Microsoft firmly denied having turned to the Australian bombshell for the role of sexy IT poster girl and revealed that McNaught participated at the "Start Here, Go Anywhere" event courtesy of the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) independent of the Redmond company and the appetizing curves, on her circumvolutions, of course.
Still Microsoft is indeed pouring a consistent amount of effort into luring girls into the high-tech industry and the company's DigiGirlz Camps are an example of the company's focus on the role of young women in the technology landscape.
"The camp is an effort to show high-school age girls what the technology industry is all about, what careers are available, and to let them see how exciting it is to create something that can truly impact a large number of people," says Mylene Padolina, a Microsoft senior diversity consultant responsible for the overall program management of DigiGirlz. "We try to give them a broad view of the technology and the products we create, along with the different kinds of positions it takes to make all that happen."
Microsoft cited data from the National Center for Women & Information Technology, revealing that the percentage of female Computer Science undergraduates at major universities across the U.S. dropped from 37% in 1985 to just 14% in 2006. Microsoft informed that its annual Redmond DigiGirlz camp, a technology camp exclusively for young women is essentially designed to "help strengthen the pipeline and get more women excited to explore technology careers."