Where are the women in tech? I’d like to hire them!
I want to hire women in tech, but I never get any female applicants.
Has this ever happened to you? You have an opening in your technology team, you divulge it, and are careful in making women the priority. Nonetheless, you end up with 100 male applicants and just 1 woman — and her résumé isn’t as good as the men’s.
You become disappointed with the lack of engagement on the part of the women, with their lack of desire to join your company; disappointed that they would disregard an opportunity to work at a company as cool as yours. Maybe you comfort yourself by thinking: “it didn’t work out, but at least I did my part”.
What I’m here to tell you: there’s plenty more you can do.
Recognize the reality of women in technology
It’s difficult to determine what factors are the most relevant to the size of the deficit of women working in tech. Yet, there is plenty of data and many studies that delve into the obstacles run into by women who pursue a technology career.
1. Blue for the boys, pink for the girls
Girls start to assimilate their roles at a young age. If you’re going to buy a 3 year old girl a present, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?
Beginning in their early childhood, women start to assume their “feminine” role and its accompanying activities: housekeeping, babysitting, and maintaining their beauty and body. Early on, the way toys are played with serve as manifestations of the culture that the child inhabits, implanting various ideas of the role they will take on.
There’s a variety of studies indicating that gender stereotypes influence the development of women as early on as their primary education — and that this bias starts with teachers and textbooks. It happens in various ways, like the way girls are given lower grades in mathematics or the way that only boys are mentioned in the roles of scientists, mathematicians, etc.
In the article Gender relations in a mathematics curriculum in the early years: how many keyrings does he have?, Livia Cardoso and pedagogue Jailma dos Santos present data from an observational study of math classes in public elementary schools. The studies noted that, for example, boys are encouraged to participate in class more than girls, through things like solving problems on the board and articulating the answers to homework questions. In a way, girls are “excluded” from class: their success is less celebrated and their mistakes aren’t answered by constructive feedback from teachers.
The problems proposed in class almost always revolve around male characters and situations considered typical to their universe — for example, those involving football. When there are female characters presented, they are presented alongside stereotypes: cooking, helping, the girl who plays with dolls. Livia points out that this happens in textbooks as well; in science textbooks, generally, the scientific character who coordinates and has big ideas is a man, whereas his assistant is a woman. It’s no coincidence that the same occurs outside of the learning environment as well — for example, in games and movies. — Excerpt taken from this article.
2. The obstacles in computer science
Computation has been considered a boy’s club for a long time. A phenomenon which greatly contributed to this was the association between computers and computer-games in the 80s. Advertisements on television, and in the media, generally showed boys using computers. In this Apple ad, a boy mocks a girl who (to me) looks sad using a computer.
It’s not just children who absorb these stereotypes, but society as a whole. For example, families don’t encourage girls to take an interest in computers as much as they do boys.
No references, no support, no encouragement: this is reflected directly in the statistics. Between 2013 and 2018, at the University of São Paulo’s Institute of Mathematics and Computation, only 9% of Computer Science graduates were women; 10% of Information Systems Bachelor’s degrees were women; as for Computer Engineering graduates, 6% were women. Though biases and stereotypes are presented in a relatively subtle and veiled way throughout childhood, they become clear as day when one arrives at college and in the job market. Often, discrimination and isolation become part these women’s reality (see some reports). According to data from PNAD, 79% of women dropout of college-level technology classes in their first year.
A fact that corroborates the thesis that the advertisements of the 80s distanced women from technology: a study shows a decline in their participation in the field following this decade (see image below). Beyond just being a thing for boys, computation also came to be seen (or sold) as an intellectually prestigious activity — prior to this, it was something closely associated with secretaries, which is why women were encouraged to pursue the profession more often back then.
3. Imposter’s syndrome
Becoming a professional is difficult, but it happens. In Brazil, around 20% of professionals in technology are women. However, “getting there” doesn’t mean social barriers have been overcome.
Imposter’s syndrome was introduced as the imposter phenomenon in 1978 by Dras. Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in the article “The Impostor Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention”. Generally speaking, it’s a phenomenon driven by a fear of one’s success being discovered as fraudulent — of being someone who doesn’t deserve the place they occupy — someone whose conquests are the fruit of chance or luck.
Thoughts like “soon it’ll be discovered I’m not good at this” are always occurring to those afflicted.
Self-sabotage, inhibition, a lack of ambition, and a fear of risking oneself are all manifestations of this.
They volunteer themselves much less for new opportunities as a consequence of their self-preservation mechanisms — since they don’t want to be seen as a fraud, they are deterred from applying for an opening they aren’t 100% qualified for.
Considering everything that happens preceding professional life, it seems almost natural that the impact of imposter’s syndrome is felt by so many women. A study indicates that 2/3 of women in the UK suffer from imposter’s syndrome in the workplace.
Still asking yourself why the résumés don’t come?
Do you think it’s possible to receive an equal amount of female and male applicants? Is it reasonable to think that the female applicants are attracted by the same means as their male counterparts?
They are completely different “people”, no?
4. How to do more
If you truly want to have more women on your tech team, there are plenty of things you can do aside from waiting for the to find their way to you. Start creating affirmative actions.
Break down the barriers which don’t need to exist
Are your job descriptions inclusive? We’ve created — myself included — many communication biases which suggest that an opening is meant for a man. In Portuguese, our language is inherently gendered — all parts of speech are determined by the subject’s gender. I understand that in English this is not such a prominent issue. However, this also transcends linguistic limitations: we use expressions like “the right guy”, “the man for the job”, etc. This is a completely unnecessary barrier that can be completely eliminated through gender-neutral language.
At Creditas, we always seek to write job descriptions in a gender-neutral way — which is why we’ve adopted some English words, like software engineer. Leonardo Andreucci wrote a post recommending that people participate in our selective processes for software engineer, and it is purposely and carefully written in a gender-neutral way.
On top of this, do you really need to list all of those prerequisites? Focus the opening’s description on what is truly necessary, forget about all those nice-to-haves.
Now you know about imposter’s syndrome. Make sure women don’t feel reduced when reading your job description.
You’re not lowering your standards: rethink your understanding of potential
The perception and discussion of “lower standards” is very common when the topic of diversity is discussed. The problem is in seeing the characteristics of a dominant group as an indication of superior quality. For example, determining that a person studying at a reputable university has more potential than a person at mediocre university is a limited and askew worldview. This type of mentality, which views these characteristics as a gauge of potential, only favors the more privileged groups that have access to more opportunities.
My personal experience is that, when I entered my first job in technology, I wasn’t exactly the ideal candidate: I didn’t speak english, I had only studied at public schools, I wasn’t accepted into a public university (in Brazil, public universities are the cream of the crop) and I didn’t have the money to pay for a private university, and I had just concluded my first and only course in the field of computation — one technical course
For some reason, I got the job and entered this profession which I refuse to leave. Because of my potential, I’ve done many things which I am very proud of. Despite my difficulties starting off, I don’t think I’m in last place in the privilege walk. Surely, there are many people behind me. But it’s necessary to be aware that “the standards” of your company are conformed to those who lead the walk, and this can create a large barrier for diversity.
People can add value to a company through characteristics well outside of the scope of what is taught at university, english class, or an MBA from abroad. Your team as a whole, not individuals, is what determines the strength of the team.
Diamonds don’t shine because their atoms are shiny, but because of how the atoms they’re composed of are grouped in patterns. Often, what’s most important is the pattern, not the parts. This also applies to people.
Mark Buchanan (2007), in The Social Atom
One of Creditas’ is affirmative actions is our mentorship program, which focuses on historically oppressed groups. Through this program, we hire women from Reprograma and Laboratoria, and it allows us to transfer two of our female crewmembers from outside areas to a technology area.
Beyond this, like with our openings, our definitions of the job design of various technology areas don’t consider higher education as a criteria on an individual’s seniority. The idea behind this is that it doesn’t matter how you gained your knowledge, or where, instead placing emphasis what you know and what you’re capable of delivering.
Create a favorable environment
Empower the women on your team and give them a voice. Speak to people and position yourself — the company needs to formalize the values it believes in and echo them throughout all its spaces. Encourage the creation of committees and work groups to discuss the topic of women in tech.
Many times, Creditas has positioned itself in a manner that is affirmative to diversity — not just regarding gender, not just in technology. For example, we recently carried out a conversation between the men of technology, led by Leo, to discuss bad situations that occur and how to address them.
Even more recently, we created a diversity group composed of subgroups who work to address different topics: African-Americans, women, women in tech, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+. All the groups are backed by and totally aligned with company management to create affirmative actions.
Inside of technology, we have a women’s group, which promotes occasional meetings to foster various discussions. It’s called “Papinho das TechMinas” (Techgirls Chat). We’ve had meetings to talk about various topics, ranging from topics that are entirely technical, to giving difficult feedback, to self-confidence, and so on.
Learn from friction and make changes
The presence of women on your team may bring up discussions that didn’t happen before. If this happens, great! Give this attention use it to enact real changes.
Creditas has always been constantly changing, learning, and adapting itself in order to become a more secure place. Lots of crises usually bring about significant change. Learn that this friction is part of the process, we’re not in a fairy tale; what makes a difference is how much the company concerns itself with evolving for real.
5. Dividing the mango
Sometimes, this conversation can be frightening and even appear like we want to give women special treatment; it might look like a cult where men don’t get a turn.
This is not its intention. It’s not about giving some people or groups more privileges, it’s about making opportunity equal. I wrote this post thinking about an episode of the cartoon Meena, which was a big part of my childhood and continues to influence the way I frame questions revolving around gender. This post is an attempt to emulate that which stood out to me from that episode, while helping people see the world from a unique perspective; this post is about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes and learning how to “divide the mango” (guess you’ll have to watch the episode if you want to understand the metaphor, won’t you?).
Interested in working with us? We’re always looking for people passionate about technology to join our crew! You can check out our openings here.
