Tech industry still shortchanged on female perspective
Summary: ZDNet's 20th anniversary: After two decades of tech, there still remains few women in the high-tech industry.
I don’t usually get worked up about gender issues, but I am dismayed with how few women there still are in the high-tech industry in 2011 versus 20 years ago.
As technology becomes increasingly integral to business sustainability and to society, I feel my sex is missing out--which means the industry likewise is shortchanged on the woman’s perspective. I liken it to running a medical research trial and neglecting to include women and girls in the clinical sample.
Gallery: Women of tech: Few but mighty
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures that of the roughly 537,000 people working as computer and information systems managers in 2010, 70.1 percent were men. If you do the math, that means only 29.9 percent were women. I don’t know what the figures were for 1991 when ZDNet burst onto the scene, but it is still a massive inequity. The percentages get even more skewed when you look at more technical careers.
Why do women shy away from technology? I think it has a lot to do with how girls are guided in elementary and high school. It also has to do with how we are treated once we get here. Consider the experience I had at my first major technology trade show in 1991: the now defunct Computer Dealer Exposition (aka Comdex). On the first day, I arrived for an appointment, where I was confronted by four seated men. Here’s how the conversation unfolded:
Man #1: “Great to meet you, have a seat and we’ll get started.” Me, noticing there are no free chairs: “Thanks, where?” Man #1, patting knee: “How about right here?
Fortunately, I have six brothers and stepbrothers so I got over it, and women are pushing forward, albeit more slowly than I would like. The gallery, "Women of tech: few but mighty," offers suggestions of a few rule-breaking women that have made/or are making an impact in the past 20 years. My list includes:
Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz Google Senior Vice President of Business Operations Shona Brown Xerox CEO Ursula Burns Oracle President Safra Catz Palm Computing & Handspring CEO Donna Dubinsky Serial technology entrepreneur Judy Estrin Former Xerox CEO and Chairman Anne Mulcahy HP Executive Vice President Ann Livermore IBM Senior Vice President Virginia Rometty Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg IBM Senior Vice President Linda Sanford
I purposely omitted leaders who hold more "traditional" women's executive positions in corporate communications, marketing or human resources. Not because I don't think their contributions are critical (they are), but because these are areas where progress has been made over the years. I'm more interested in the women who are breaking the "rules."
In a December 2010 TED Talk video, Facebook’s Sandberg reminds us the gender gap isn’t a technology-specific thing. She suggests three things women can do to start rectifying the situation – and it would be great if the guys reading this would help support these ideas.
- “Take a seat at the table.” Too often, women don’t assert their rightful position. Who knows why. Maybe we’re afraid of being called a bitch or being disliked, common fallout of female assertiveness.
- “Make your partner a real partner.” This is directed primarily at any woman (or man) with children and cuts to the issue of how to ensure mothers and fathers share child-rearing equally if both work outside the home full time.
- “Don’t leave before you leave.” Some women disengage from career challenges before they actually have children. Sandberg says “leaning back” is a career-damaging habit that doesn't just damage the individual but also reflects more broadly across the workplace. Sad, but true.
In the TED video, Sandberg says, the changes that things will change during her own career are minimal. But she’s rooting for her daughter -- AND her son to help usher in meaningful change that will bring more of the woman's perspective to the technology industry -- and, indeed, to corporate America in the larger sense: “I’m hopeful that future generations can [fix this]. I think a world that was run where half of our countries and half of our companies were run by women, would be a better world.”
Who knows, maybe in another 20 years?
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Talkback
RE: Tech industry still shortchanged on female perspective
yes, but...
As long as [fill in the blank] does not cause a disruptive work environment and they are as good or better than other candidates they get hired, not withstanding some outliers who won't hire [fill in the blank] no matter what.
This article is bigotted in that it assumes there MUST be a female contribution in order to attain a "good" outcome.
RE: Tech industry still shortchanged on female perspective
RE: Tech industry still shortchanged on female perspective
I think it's a social perception thing...
Many women, I think, perceive the hard tech fields like engineering as one of those evil necessities, like trash collecting. It's needed but they wouldn't be caught dead doing it themselves. Women are very social and are very attuned to social acceptance. When it comes time to choose that career in high school and college, choosing one that is so mired in geek-dom can be viewed as social suicide by her and her social group.
What does our society value? Sport stars, who really have no social value other than the entertainment of men virtually beating the tar out of one another--and yet we think the roman coliseum was barbaric.
Until we start celebrating the scientific mind, and what contributions they make to humanity, young women will continue to choose more "socially positive" fields. Notice how much management women are in? It's socially positive for them to be in that part of the field. If they say "Hi, I'm a tech manager" people are happy as opposed to them wondering what's wrong with them for being a lab-rat.
RE: Tech industry still shortchanged on female perspective
I agree lets make IT more appealing to females at an early age. Empower them by having classes that teach simple things like how to upgrade the memory. Demystify it you may find they love it!
Anne
RE: Tech industry still shortchanged on female perspective
RE: Tech industry still shortchanged on female perspective
I can't recall now where it was, but I remember that there were studies from the 70's or 80's that showed that while women were often behind the curve as far as technology business adoption and acceptance, they were often the early adopters of technologies, because they excel as communicators, and of course because they (as a general rule) are tied more closely to children and teenagers who adapt technologies much more readily than parents.
Also, many studies are now showing that women are becoming the majority in corporate and professional environments. So, I wonder, just as in professional sports, will tech start to reflect this reality, as did African Americans in the 60's and 70's?
hmm..but..?
..beyond that though - combine the two: black women..and I am hard-pressed to find any..I've had only one African-American computer science professor, and that's a shame too.
(and yes, I am an African-American graduating senior in computer science and applied mathematics..just to get that out there too haha)
The Women of ENIAC
What does that mean in the context of this discussion?
It means that women have been a critical part of computers since the beginning, and since these women were the main programmers it also means that in terms of skills, they were at a minimum equal to (if not superior to) many men who performed the same tasks on that same equipment.
Bottom line: women have been there with computer history all along, and chances are that they don't always make enough noise to be heard...or their stories aren't being told. I also agree with a previous post that indicated the "semi-anti-social" nature of geekdom plays a role in chasing off perfectly capable women from computer science and engineering. I think that the mass proliferation of computers and the Internet into everyone's handheld device and living room is working to overturn that stigma, however. Now, if you write a program for your Android phone that does something neat, and you show it to your fellow high school buddies, you're less likely to be looked at as a loser geek and more likely to be seen as a brilliant demigod...except by the persistent group of idiots who think that having another guy's name (like Tommy Hilfiger's) imprinted on your underpants is the only way to be socially acceptable.
RE: Tech industry still shortchanged on female perspective
RE: Tech industry still shortchanged on female perspective