Women have made great strides working their way into technical positions at companies, but there’s still a very long way to go before they reach parity with men, especially in leadership positions.

All that will surprise no one, but breakthrough executives such as IBM Corp. Chief Executive Ginni Rometty (above) shared a raft of anecdotes and advice today on how women can actually change the situation, as they kicked off the Anita Borg Institute’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Houston. The annual show held by the institute, which promotes the role of women in technology, is expected to draw some 15,000 participants for a three-day series of technical and management presentations and, not least, a lot of networking and recruiting.

Speakers didn’t need to tell the audience of mostly women about the challenges they face in what has been a male-dominated industry — though they presented statistics on how, despite some recent growth in women in tech fields, it’s still tougher for them to get leadership roles. Instead, the presenters mostly stuck to trying to inspire them to take chances at a pivotal time when the shortcomings and failures of technology can be laid partly to rest on the lack of a female perspective in technology design and development.

Telle Whitney, CEO of the Anita Borg Institute

“Organizations today recognize the power and value of having women at the table in technology,” said Telle Whitney, president and chief executive of the Anita Borg Institute. She said it’s time for women around the world to take “their rightful place” as tech leaders and innovators.

Rometty, who took over as the first female CEO at IBM in early 2012, provided surprisingly personal examples of how she overcame the obstacles presented by growing up in a single-mother household and taking on challenges she didn’t think she was ready for.

When her father left the family, she said, her mother had no money, no education and no home. “She went back to school immediately,” Rometty said, and worked at night.” We watched and we learned,” Rometty added. The lesson: “You never let someone define who you are. Only you define who you are.”

Early in her career at IBM, some 20 years ago, she recalled, her manager said he had a new opportunity for her. “I said, ‘Wait, I’m not ready. Maybe a year or two. Let me go home and think about it.’” After talking to her husband about it, “he finally looked at me and said, ‘Do you think a man would answer the question that way?’”

So Rometty walked in the next day and took the job, to which her manager replied, “Don’t ever do that again.” The point she learned: “Growth and comfort never coexist.”

A third lesson, perhaps a bit more self-serving, was driven home in 2012 when she ran into the CEO of a big healthcare company who expressed overwhelming enthusiasm about the potential for IBM’s Watson computer system, which Rometty considers IBM’s “moonshot.” “No matter where you are in your career, work on something you’re passionate about and work on something bigger than yourself,” she said. “You have great opportunities in front of you if you seize them.”

One IBMer she trotted onstage for another example was Lisa Seacat DeLuca, who is IBM’s most prolific female inventor, with 250 patents. Despite having two sets of twins under four years old, DeLuca found time to write a children’s book (A Robot Story: learn to count to 10 in binary) and a companion mobile app. She gave a talk to staff at IBM, which led to her landing a new job at IBM Commerce.

Rometty noted that the notion of women taking a greater role in technology isn’t even close to new. Ada Lovelace in the 1840s worked for Charles Babbage, the father of computing, and wrote the first programs. Grace Hopper, the naval officer for whom the conference is named, wrote the first compiler while programming an IBM computer in the 1940s. And in the 1960s, three women were the mathematicians at NASA who calculated the trajectories for John Glenn and others. “Women have helped drive every era of technology,” she said.

Latanya Sweeney, professor of government and technology at Harvard University

Another speaker, Latanya Sweeney, a professor of government and technology at Harvard University, sketched out her experiences to provide an example of how a career in technology doesn’t necessarily end at engineering and programming. Her work is intended to show how “technology design is the new policymaker. Arbitrary design decisions dictate the way we live our lives.”

Sweeney’s early interest in mathematics put her on a journey that has led to her investigating why search algorithms single out “black-sounding names” in ads for arrest records and how SAT tutoring services charge more to people who live in areas with higher Asian populations. Her point was that working in technology can change not just which technologies the world uses but how those technologies get used.

SiliconANGLE’s video unit theCUBE is interviewing dozens of executives at the conference, which runs through Friday:

Photos by Robert Hof