Women make up 47 percent of the general workforce but only 29 percent of workers in IT occupations, according to a White House study of gender pay equity in the new economy. The figure represents a 27 percent decline in the number of women in IT since 1986, when the percent of female IT workers peaked at 40 percent. Today, women are virtually absent from the ranks of senior IT management.

So, where have all the women gone? Some people would have you believe that the long hours of the IT profession are driving women home to be with their families. Yet, the 24-hour demands of physician care, the graveyard shifts of nursing and the always on-call status of real estate agents haven't driven women in those professions home.

And how do you explain the lack of enthusiasm for IT among young women? It's certainly not the pay, nor the perks, nor the job market. Still, some people would have you believe that it's a fear of computers or, better still, a fear of competing with potential dating interests that keeps young girls away from IT.

Let's get real, here. The image of the computer nerd as the human paragon of dating and virility belongs in an Austin Powers movie — and let's leave it there. Any notion that fear of competition or an innate deference to the opposite sex is keeping young women out of IT flies in the face of growing anecdotal evidence that in the newly emerging field of Life Sciences, women physicians, women chemists and other female scientists are taking on key roles in biotechnology companies.

But let's stop speculating. Here's a fact for you: Women are leaving corporations to start their own businesses at twice the rate of men. CorporateHOPE, a Vienna, Va.-based nonprofit devoted to "optimizing the unique talents of women," says women opt out of a work situation when, "The energy that [they] expend on conforming severely depletes what they have available to create and produce." Put plainly, we are wasting women's time forcing them to conform when there is clearly a need to get work done.

And that brings me back to the FEMME Program and its devotion to the concept of providing a place where young girls are free to explore, free to challenge and free to be girls.

No one ever discovered anything of note by conforming. It was conventional wisdom, along with the science of the day and the religious thought of the day, that lead to Galileo's condemnation for heresy for proving that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe.

Conventional wisdom was that the earth was flat and that Christopher Columbus would fall off as he traveled west to arrive at destinations east.

And as for defying the odds, I suggest that we all take a moment to reflect on the accomplishment of a remarkable 7-year-old who recently captured our attention in the news.