Why is Ada Lovelace such a big deal?
Diving deeper into the challenges and barriers women face in entering and advancing their careers in STEM
Starting today, October 11th and running until October 15th, we are highlighting women in STEM in our week-long celebration of Ada Lovelace Day.
October 12th is Ada Lovelace Day. Since its founding in 2009, Ada Lovelace Day has been celebrated on the 2nd Tuesday of October to highlight the often-overlooked contributions of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).
In part 1, we explored the history and legacy of Ada Lovelace. In part 2, we dive deeper into the STEM community to examine the importance of highlighting women in STEM.
Representation. Representation. Representation.
“The people who have the power to set the rules need to be representative of the people living on this planet.”
Ada Lovelace Day is an annual day where the STEM community comes together to champion the work of women in STEM.
For many years, women have been underrepresented in STEM — from science textbooks, university courses, and occupations. In the university ecosystem, the percentage of women graduating in core STEM subjects in the UK is low at around 26% (2019 UCAS data from HESA). Courses in engineering and technology, and computer science have even lower percentages of women graduates of 16%.
STEM careers are also male-dominated, with women making up just 10% of engineering professionals and 16% of IT professionals.
Yes, there are women-dominated occupations, like personal care workers and health care assistants, and men also face problems of underrepresentation and unequal opportunities in certain industries. We are advocating for equal representation & opportunity for women in STEM because lack of diversity — of any kind in any industry — directly translates to missed opportunities, unchecked bias, and uniformity of thought. Importantly, as a result of the industry being male-dominated, women are facing barriers in entering and advancing their careers in STEM.
Improving this so more women have access to opportunities to enter and advance in STEM will lead to improved economic opportunities, diversity of thought and more innovative and collaborative culture. Let’s take a closer look!
Scientific advances, innovation and products with exclusive benefits
Activities in STEM are a direct reflection of the community’s lived experiences. Oftentimes, research advances, tech innovation, and new products are an answer to challenges and problems experienced by individuals.
“What problem are you solving?”
This is the question all founders are asked when pitching their startup. Innovation, at its core, is a process of creating better solutions to existing problems, and awareness is a crucial first step in this process. How can you build a solution when you aren’t aware of the problem’s existence? Often, awareness comes from personal experience, anecdotes, or mainstream media. However, when people are missing from the conversation, their problems go unnoticed.
“Lack of diversity — of any kind in any industry — directly translates to missed opportunities, unchecked bias, and uniformity of thought.”
A prominent example of this is medical research.
From 1997 to 2000, 8 out of the 10 prescription drugs taken off the market by the US FDA due to severe adverse effects posed greater health risks for women than for men.
Women are 50% more likely to be misdiagnosed with a heart attack because women are less likely to experience the classic heart attack symptoms of pain in the chest and left arm. These symptoms were discovered in research led by men, of mostly men participants. Oftentimes, women present without chest pain, but rather with stomach pain, breathlessness, nausea and fatigue.
In the book, Pain and Prejudice, author Gabrielle Jackson argues that,
“Not only have doctors, scientists and researchers mostly been men, but most of the cells, animals and humans studied in medical science have also been male: most of the advances we have seen in medicine have come from the study of male biology.”
Anecdotes like these can be found in many aspects of women’s lives — from the workplace, academics, home life, to daily and public life.
Kat Holmes — an influential leader in inclusive design & UX Design Director at Google — explains this concept in her book entitled Mismatch: How inclusion shapes design:
“What we produce has an effect on society, which in turn shapes the next set of problems we aim to solve. A solution becomes a barrier when it’s designed only for people with certain abilities. The brainpower and ingenuity of anyone who doesn’t match that design are simply untapped…
“[Exclusive designs] simply reflect a series of choices made by people who have the power to set the rules of a given design.”
The people who have the power to set the rules need to be representative of the people living on this planet. And that includes bringing more women — of all ethnicity, socioeconomic status, nationality — into STEM through shaping the community to be more inclusive and accessible.
Biased AI algorithms
The past decade has witnessed explosive increases in the development of machine learning and AI algorithms. The power of AI lies in its ability for machines to “learn”. Through numerous iterations using large quantities of data, machines develop models to do tasks such as diagnose diseases, play strategy games, and enable drones & self-driving cars. The potential for AI is huge and ranges across a wide spectrum of industries.
AI algorithms are developed and trained on data. In our recent Demystifying AI panel event, Gianluca Mauro — founder of AI Academy & author of Zero to AI — emphasised the need to look beyond the volume of data but to the quality of that data and ensure the right data is collected to train AI models.
“When a workforce is only representative of a certain group of people, it is much more likely for unconscious biases to be unchecked and amplified, leading to “fair” computers exacerbating historical inequities.”
We expect computers to be objective, logical and unbiased. However, computers learn from the data we train them on, and it is extremely easy for algorithms to adopt the unconscious bias in humans. There are numerous examples,
- 1988, the computer programme for St George’s Hospital Medical School for interview shortlisting was biased against women and those with non-European names
- 2014, a criminal justice algorithm used in Florida mislabeled African-American defendants as “high risk” at nearly twice the rate it mislabeled white defendants
- 2018, natural language processing models trained on news articles have gender stereotypes
One of the advantages of computers is their ability to pick up extremely subtle patterns from a quantity of data that is too large for any human to process. And these subtle patterns include the ingrained, unconscious biases in human decisions that reflect and led to social inequities.
“A more diverse AI community would be better equipped to anticipate, review, and spot bias and engage communities affected.”
When a workforce is only representative of a certain group of people, it is much more likely for unconscious biases to be unchecked and amplified, leading to “fair” computers exacerbating historical inequities. Much wider awareness and critical, holistic understanding of human bias is required to combat unconscious bias in a uniform workforce, something which simply isn’t currently present.
In a Harvard Business Review article titled “What Do We Do About the Biases in AI?”, authors James Manyika, Jake Silberg, and Brittany Presten present a multitude of solutions towards this problem, ranging from academic research to management processes in AI-centred companies. Importantly, they stress the urgent need to actively diversifying the AI field.
“Finally, invest more in diversifying the AI field itself. A more diverse AI community would be better equipped to anticipate, review, and spot bias and engage communities affected. This will require investments in education and opportunities — work like that of AI4ALL, a nonprofit focused on developing a diverse and inclusive pipeline of AI talent in under-represented communities through education and mentorship.”
The Impact of COVID-19
COVID-19 has caused many pains and has especially taken a toll on working women. When schools shut down during lockdown, many families needed to make a tough decision as to who stayed at home to take care of the kids at home. Childcare shapes our economy and the career of working parents in many ways, especially for women. It is one of the main reasons women cite for hanging back from taking really intense jobs like CEO, surgeon, or law partner. And the pandemic caused millions of women to drop out of the workforce to care for and educate their kids.
The podcast — Planet Money from NPR — did an excellent piece exploring “Women and Work” where host Stacey Vanek Smith explored the factors contributing to the inequities women faced with work. One anecdote in the episode saw TIME’s Alana Semuels trying to purchase products only from companies owned or led by women. And it was just so difficult because about 80% of CEOs are male and nearly 90% are white.
The statistics from the startup ecosystem is discouraging. Allyson Kapin wrote in a Forbes article,
Fact: Only 2% of funding goes to women-led startups. For women of colour, the stats are far more dismal at just 0.64%.
Fact: Global investment funding for women-led startups dropped 30% between 2019 and 2020, despite it having been a record year of fundraising for startups — but for startups led by men.
Fact: Even with the rise of FemTech startups, which are focusing on women’s healthcare — a sector that’s historically been significantly overlooked and undermined, only 3% of total HealthTech funding went to FemTech startups in 2020.
95% of VC partners in the US are men and this uniformity in the people who hold the power to decide which startup receives money is exacerbating the inequity. Thankfully, initiatives like Ada’s List, Women in VC, and Black Girl Fest are changing the horizon of women in STEM.
We want to do our part in changing this. Throughout this week, we will be sharing interviews with founders who are building startups in STEM, communities and support networks, our own perspectives and advice on working in STEM. And all of this content will be focussed exclusively on women.
We hope you can join us — use #AdaLovelace and #WomenInTech on socials to shout your support and celebrate the women you respect.
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