大象传媒

Business Daily today talks to three of the world's top women computer engineers. They tell us how they bucked the male trend in the industry. And we ask, what is Plan B for Greece? The man who draws up such deals explains why more time to pay doesn't mean letting the profligate off the hook.

Women do not tend to go into engineering - that's what the figures show. In the US, one recent report said barely one in 10 engineers were female. The British parliament heard earlier in the year that women make up just 7% of British engineers. In Japan in recent years, just under 10% of engineering graduates have been women. You get the picture of a very male industry.

Though the image is changing. You may remember that Mattel, the maker of the Barbie doll, have just introduced a version with a pink lap-top. There was a poll of what profession the new version should be, and the answer came back: "computer engineer". To try to illuminate under-representation, we talked to three top computer engineers:

Diane Bryant is the Chief Information Officer at Intel. She at one time toyed with the idea of hair-dressing before getting a degree in electrical engineering.
Lily De Los Rios is a software engineer who's now Vice President of Symantec, the big anti-virus company. She emigrated to the United States as a child from Vietnam with no English and found her aptitude for mathematics compensated.
Fran Allen, joined IBM in 1957 and was the first woman to win the Turing Award, computing's Nobel prize.

Steve Evans asked them all why they'd taken up engineering in the first place.

Staying with the theme of women in work, and discrimination - the glass ceiling is always just about to be shattered - but will joblessness postpone the day again? James Srodes, our regular commentator in Washington, thinks it might.

When it comes to Greece, we know Plan A. But what about Plan B? Plan A for the Euro is to shovel money at Greece while insisting on reform. Meanwhile, a flurry of finance ministers and posses of politicians meet in Berlin and Brussels, even as the markets show their scepticism by engaging in what amounts to a crash - a 10% drop in the Dow over past weeks. So if the money doesn't halt the crisis what happens?

Lee Buccheit is the go-to man for Plan Bs in restructuring international debt - a euphemism for making it easier on debtor countries. He's a New York lawyer who's worked on a string of these international deals. He told us what he thinks should happen if the current Greek bail-out by European countries and the IMF failed.