Oh wow! She's British AND a woman AND working in Microsoft!!!
Go Britain!!
I don't think that the need for women in IT is as big here in England as America, as I see it.
In my university Computer Science course classes, I'd have to say that very close to half of the people there are women. Granted that most of them are doing Business Computing and Information Systems, but they're still doing IT based stuff, and will eventually
be led into a job that is dealing directly with IT.
I think that women should be introduced more to technology, though, simply to give us geeks something else to dream about at night