Women in the technology sector face a whole host of obstacles to success. Structural sexism is widely reported, with 52% of women saying they are paid less for the same job. Zero women executive boards appear to be the norm, as are complaints that women are not given the same opportunities for promotion as their male counterparts. Given this environment, the women who do persevere in this industry are all the more worthy of celebration.

In honour of International Women’s Day, we dig a little deeper into the tech industry to give you our no-nonsense guide to women defeating the odds- and changing the face of technology in the process.

Activism

Yvette J. Alberdingk Thijm

Executive Director, Witness
A member of Witness’s board of directors since 2005, Alberdingk Thijm joined the nonprofit human-rights video community full time in 2008.

Dana Bourland
Senior Director, Enterprise Community Partners’ Green Communities
Bourland’s carbon-offset fund backs design and construction choices that yield the cleanest, most energy-efficient houses. It raises money for affordable homes and saves the environment in the process.

Beth Kanter
Consultant, BethKanter.org
The master of social-media fund-raising, Kanter (who shares her techniques widely) recently brought in $200,000 for Cambodian orphans using Twitter and other social-media tools.

Darlene Liebman
Co-founder, Howcast Media
In partnership with Facebook, Google, YouTube, and others, Liebman’s Howcast teaches people worldwide to use the social Web to organize grassroots political movements.

Ellen Miller
Co-founder and Executive Director, Sunlight Foundation
Nobody has done more than Miller to use technology to bring transparency to Washington. For three years, her foundation has been churning out Web sites, databases, and online tools that open congressional doings to common folk. Watch her talk about her experiences of being a woman in the tech industry, and her work on ‘data-powered democracy’ below.

Gaming Industry

Sara de Freitas

Director of Research, Serious Games Institute
De Freitas sits at the epicenter of the serious-gaming movement: U.K.-based SGI aims to use gaming technology and techniques for nonentertainment purposes, from education to health care to defense.

Denise Fulton
Studio Head, Midway Games
Fulton oversees 100-plus programmers, designers, writers, and artists at the Austin outpost of the legendary company that brought us Space Invaders and Mortal Kombat. (At press time, Midway was staving off bankruptcy.)

Lucy Bradshaw
Executive Producer, Electronic Arts
Bradshaw, who headed production for some of the mega-selling Sims iterations, led the 100-person production team for Spore, game designer Will Wright’s latest smash hit. In the video below, Lucy talks about the success of The Sims franchise, and its future.

Morgan Romine
Team Captain, Frag Dolls
Until recently, she was a crack marketer at Ubisoft, helping turn titles like Assassin’s Creed into hits. But her superhero status derives from her role as captain of the Frag Dolls, the first all-female team to win a professional gaming tournament. In that role, she travels the world proving that women are gamers too—and kick-ass ones at that.

Entrepreneurs

Caterina Fake

Co-founder, Flickr
Fake not only cofounded photo-sharing behemoth Flickr but also sold it to Yahoo for a reported $35 million. Now everyone is buzzing about her next project, something called Hunch, which is in stealth mode.

Eileen Gittins
CEO, Blurb
Gittins’s book self-publishing platform is lean and green and has unleashed the insta-author (and book retailer) in everyone from amateur photographers to big brands like Lexus. With a million-plus books created, Blurb is also—ahem—profitable.

Sandy Jen and Elaine Wherry
Co-founders, Meebo
Often cited as the Web’s fastest growing IM tool, this third startup for Jen and Wherry (and fellow cofounder Seth Sternberg) is on a cacophonous track. It lets some 40 million users yap over any IM network and in a variety of settings; new partnerships with Hearst and Universal Music point to an even chattier future.

Mary Lou Jepsen
Founder and CEO, Pixel Qi
As CTO of One Laptop Per Child, Jepsen led design and development of the least expensive and most energy efficient laptop ever made. She founded Pixel Qi in 2008 to commercialize the groundbreaking OLPC screen technology she invented.

Alicia Morga
CEO, Consorte Media
Using science (not cultural hype) to match brand advertisers with Hispanic-American consumers on the Web, Morga’s marketing firm had 100% growth last year. And she’s hiring.

Kim Polese
CEO, SpikeSource
Polese was part of the early Java team at Sun Microsystems and cofounded Marimba (now part of BMC). Her new business—which boasts a partnership with Intel—helps companies test the security and quality of open-source software.

Tina Sharkey
President, BabyCenter
Sharkey’s site reaches nearly 80% of new moms online in the U.S. and some 6 million visitors a month internationally. With the 2007 acquisition of MayasMom.com, a social-networking site, Sharkey’s parental domination is nearly complete.

Rashmi Sinha
Cofounder and CEO, SlideShare
The psychology PhD turned Web designer and community expert has created a vibrant social hub around—of all things—the PowerPoint deck. Launched with less than $50,000, SlideShare now has a million registered users, plus a partnership with LinkedIn.

And finally… Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, arguably the most well-known woman in the tech industry, talks about what should be done to get more women into the sector.