As people and companies around the world continue to settle the digital frontier, one organization is doing its best to ensure that women in Japan aren't left behind.

DigitalEve Japan will be celebrating its third anniversary this February as part of a worldwide, non-profit network for women in new media and digital technology. While the government's IT Strategy Council trumpeted an overly ambitious goal to achieve global IT leadership by 2005 in its December 2000 report, this group of enterprising women has quietly gone about providing that leadership to a very significant part of the population.

DigitalEve web relaunch weekend

DigitalEve Japan (DEJ) includes around 25,000 members in over 50 chapters around the world. It was founded as a bilingual chapter covering all of Japan, but with events held mostly in Tokyo and Hokkaido. It has over 550 members including not only Japanese, but also foreign nationals currently based in Japan. It's goal is to support, encourage and empower women to become fully integrated as top-level leaders, professionals, role models and mentors in their fields within new media and digital technology. As a side benefit, its welcoming culture also attracts a multicultural membership. This makes DEJ quite a unique and progressive entity in Japan's business environment.

Unfortunately, a cursory glance at the statistics shows that DEJ has its work cut out for itself. In a survey of twenty OECD countries, Japan came in dead last for the participation of women in its Information & Telecommunication Technology (ICT) sector at a whopping 17 per cent. That's less than half that of countries like France and the US where women make up about 38% of the ICT sector. And looking down the pipeline isn't any more encouraging. For example, a 1998 survey of students enrolled in ICT courses revealed that women made up between 5% and 8% of the total. For a country that estimates a current shortfall of 200,000 computer-related workers, this is not encouraging news.

Excel workshop

Undaunted, DEJ has quietly begun an IT revolution of its own. Starting with the basics, it is bringing together people from all corners of Japan through free membership to its email list and quarterly online chats. Members can ask each other questions, swap stories and alert each other to new developments and job prospects. Personal interaction occurs at once-a-month themed DigitalEVEnings held in Tokyo and Hokkaido on the tenth of each month.

They also provide workshops to help train women in using technology to further their goals at work or for personal use. It is truly a grassroots phenomenon and if the power unleashed by this sort of thing in Korea's presidential election and Howard Dean's rise to prominence in the United States is any indication, then the best is yet to come from these DEvas.

Party time

In keeping with its inclusive nature, the organisation also welcomes the support and participation of men. Expanding beyond this to encourage young girls to join the IT field is one goal of the organisation. As Mamiko Matsumura, a former Japanese PR Coordinator of DEJ, says, "It's not our main activity so far, but we feel a strong necessity to offer these kinds of activities. Personally, I feel Japanese schools must give students more flexible options." Hopefully, educators are listening to these people!

So can DEJ help the government realise its goal of being Number One by 2005? Well, even Mamiko isn't too optimistic about Japan's prospects: "Honestly speaking, I don't believe Japan can be the leading IT nation by that time because we have too many political and cultural restrictions to overcome. Japanese businessMEN (her emphasis) still have a highly conservative way of thinking about women in the workforce."

There you go boys. Get your heads out the sand and look around. The solution to your IT woes are right beside you; they are your sisters, wives, girlfriends and mothers. You've had ten years of running this country into the ground. Time to give the other half of the population a crack at getting Japan back to world-class status.