Someday we won't have to pay special attention to women in the pages of this publication. That will indicate we have reached normalcy: that women can work, rise, and succeed in technology with only their own talents and ambitions as limiting factors.

The statistics, however, indicate that we are still far from that moment. Women make up 46 percent of the U.S. labor force but hold just 22 percent of tech jobs. The world of tech remains overwhelmingly male, especially in the top rungs.

The perception that women face obstacles in succeeding in tech is not universally shared. Even some of the few women at the top of the industry play down the problem. Ann Livermore, an executive vice president at Hewlett-Packard, told Red Herring that the world of technology is wide open for women, that gender bias is no longer an issue. Ms. Livermore may be viewing the field through the perspective of her own spectacular success—and her company's renowned commitment to diversity—but the numbers do not reflect the openness she sees.

The gender gap is most obvious in the graduate schools that fill the ranks of technology leadership, although there are signs of progress. Between 1996 and 2005, female representation in the United States increased from 12 to 18 percent among engineering Ph.D.s, from 13 to 15 percent among physics Ph.D.s, and from 15 to 20 percent among computer science Ph.D.s, according to data from the National Science Foundation. In the European Union, women in computer science Ph.D. programs were 18 percent of the total in 2005.

The numbers are also meager in the ranks of management. Statistics from the United Kingdom show that just 7 percent of strategy leaders and planners in technology are women. In the European Union, the percentage of women working in tech is higher than in the U.S., especially in Eastern Europe, but those numbers shrink even more dramatically at higher levels.

One of the most baffling and persistent gaps is in entrepreneurship. Venture capitalism is overwhelmingly male, and, maybe consequently, so is the leadership of venture-backed companies. By most estimates, fewer than 5 percent of Silicon Valley companies are led by women; the numbers are even lower around the world. There could be many causes, from the kind of management experience that women get in companies to the lack of appeal of working an old boys' network to raise money.

That is why we have chosen to highlight women entrepreneurs, the leaders of the startups that hope to be the next Google or Yahoo—or one of their acquisitions. They are exceptional, both in terms of statistics and achievement, as you will read in the following profiles.