Gender Diversity in Tech
Addressing the Pipeline and Creating the Culture
This International Women’s Day, I spoke at a conference put on by Women Techmakers, a program initiated by Google to provide visibility, community, and resources for women in technology. I was very honoured to speak amongst other amazing women in our field and share my story and thoughts on the Women in Tech movement.
As one of the Montreal Chapter Leads of Ladies Learning Code, I’m very passionate about promoting gender diversity in tech. I’ve given many talks in the past on this subject but this was the first time where I got to discuss not only the pipeline but also the culture that fosters diversity in the workplace.
I began my talk by introducing statistics that demonstrate the need to address the issues that women in tech face.
On top of this there are countless Medium posts, TechCrunch pieces, and newspaper articles discussing why there are a lack of women in tech.
Being new to this field, I’d like to share my story.
I’m a recovering Luddite
Luddites are defined as a group of early 19th century English work (wo)men who destroyed labour-saving machinery as a form of protest — broadly speaking, someone who is opposed to especially technological change (Merriam Dictionary). Up until 3 years ago, I was terrified of technology. I hated the idea of acquiring knowledge through social media, the possibility of being addicted to my phone and more importantly, the environmental effects of technology. My frustration likely stemmed from an insecurity in not understanding how technology works, and therefore not feeling tech savvy enough to work with it.
I managed to avoid technology for the better part of my life. I studied classical guitar performance and musicology in my undergraduate degree and taught music for most of my professional career.
“After I finished my studies, I knew that technology wasn’t going anywhere and that I had to embrace it in some way.”
I enrolled in a graduate program in Communication Studies at Concordia. It was the perfect blend of being hands on while also maintaining enough critical distance from technology. One of my professors gave me the idea to attend Ladies Learning Code in Toronto: a women-run, not-for-profit organization that runs workshops for women to learn programming and other technical skills in a social and collaborative environment. I had very little experience with coding except for a programming class that I took in high school made up of 5 girls and 20 boys. It was the worst grade I had ever received.
My experience with Ladies Learning Code was quite different. With the help of an incredible mentor, I learned how to make a social network for cats using Drupal. Sure, I was not a web developer after 6 hours but I was able to make something and I had a lot of fun doing it. Soon after the workshop ended, I reached out to the Ladies Learning Code team telling them I’d be willing to help them in any way bring this to other cities, which led to the founding of the Montreal chapter.
I’ve read countless articles that point to the pipeline as the primary reason why there are so few women in tech. Maybe it’s the lack of media representation of women in the industry. Perhaps it’s the fact that in the early 90s, computers and video games were always targeted towards boys rather than being gender neutral. Perhaps we need to have a discussion about the accessibility of this sort of education.
In my case, it was all about opening that first door. From there, I discovered my potential within the industry, both in terms of career and personal development. When the pipeline to diversity is discussed, education becomes the main focus. In my experience with Ladies Learning Code, I felt comfortable and I knew that I was welcome. I then applied to the code bootcamp HackerYou because it was founded by the same team as Ladies Learning Code, and has 75% women enrolment. Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code, has been famously quoted as saying:
“Teach a girl to code, she’ll teach four.”
I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Ladies Learning Code grow in Montreal with over 900 women having attended our workshops to date. It’s so satisfying to see some of those learners then become mentors themselves. I truly believe in passing our skills in this authentic manner through safe and comfortable environments — with no pretense or prerequisites.
Barriers into the workplace
Despite all these efforts from women-in-tech groups, however, there is still a barrier to women entering the workforce as developers. Some question whether it’s an issue of the industry not hiring women due to their internal gender biases, or the fact that the women themselves are not applying. A study was released showing that:
Women won’t apply for a job unless they meet 100% of the job posting’s requirements, whereas men will apply if they meet only 60%.
I was recently introduced to the platform Textio, which analyzes job postings and determines which ones will attract more men or women based on the vocabulary used. It’s a great tool for companies to use as a way to test their job listings for gender bias.
Major tech companies such as Facebook, Pinterest, and Amazon have started to implement the Rooney Rule as a way to ensure that at least one woman and one minority are considered in any slate of candidates. This tactic has been under scrutiny as gender or racial positive discrimination but I feel that it does shed much-needed light on the issue. There is value in being aware when all of their job applicants are white males. There are always ways to reach out to broader cross-sections of society groups, such as hosting women-in-tech meet ups. Another way companies can reach out to women is by sponsoring them to attend bootcamps.
Etsy sponsors women to attend The Recurse Centre in New York (previously called Hacker School). This grew their female engineer team by 500% in one year.
Beyond the boundaries that women face in entering certain positions, it’s also valuable to acknowledge the culture that our industry promotes. If we’re an industry that talks so much about diversity, what exactly does it mean when you post a job requiring a specific culture fit? A lot of women leave the industry for various reasons including hostile working environments, sexual harassment and isolation from their peers.
What I’ve learned in the past year being a developer, is that coding involves a lot of embracing failure. It’s difficult to come from a practice that I knew so well, to one that was so foreign. In the beginning, it’s a lot about asking questions, Googling, pairing, and Stack Overflow. Reshma Saujani put it so well her TED talk this year:
“We’re teaching our girls to be perfect, and our boys to be brave.”
Brenna O’Brien, one of my instructors at HackerYou in Toronto and now front-end engineer at TEDTalks, gave a talk called “JavaScript Community: The Good Parts” where she insists about how we can be more welcoming to new developers. She covers everything from avoiding certain words in education by Chris Coyier, to not being overly critical when people use last year’s JavaScript model. I definitely see that JavaScript is in this exciting state where developers are passionate and new frameworks are coming out every week, but we should also be mindful of not being overly alienating and critical towards others.
The community that got me to where I am today
I wouldn’t be where I am today without the mentors and the Ladies Learning Code community. I attended a YES Montreal Women in Tech focus group and we talked a lot about the importance of mentorship in the workplace. Dynamo has embraced pair programming, frequent code reviews, and mentorship which I’m incredibly grateful for. Moreover, the numerous groups that have given me and other women in the industry support including Montreal Girl Geeks, PyLadies, Montreal All-Girl Hack night, Pixelles and YES Montreal Women in Tech have been incredibly inspiring, making me want to grow the Ladies Learning Code community. I recently confessed in an interview with Andrea Zoellner that I’m not entirely comfortable in attending meet-ups where only a small percentage of the room is female. It’s something that I hope to overcome, but it’s still a barrier for me.
I think it’s fair to say that our industry has been under a lot of scrutiny when it comes to hostile work environments. From the countless stories at encountered on Model View Culture to statistics on Elephant in the Valley, it’s clear that there are specific challenges facing women in our industry. One way for companies to overcome this is to denounce this type of behaviour as unacceptable. I think that by creating an inclusive environment, your company becomes welcoming towards everyone and your talent is more likely to stay and thrive within their given field.
So, does every woman need to be a developer? Should you only hire female developers? It’s not that simple. I think that learning to code should be more accessible. I think we should teach our kids about technology and coding so they don’t have preconceived notions as to whether or not the tech field is for them based on their socio-economic class or gender. I think that companies and those who are hiring should be aware of these issues and be concerned if their team is only male. I think when we say that we’re proud of our company culture, we need to define what that means and address whether or not our culture has the means for diversity to flourish.
It’s great that companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google have become transparent about their numbers. But the numbers are not enough. I think addressing diversity is not only about addressing a pipeline, but also about criticizing the culture. We want not only to bring more women into tech positions, but for them to grow and thrive. It’s not just about hiring for the sake of meeting a quota, but providing mentorship and support for these new developers, within a safe environment for them to learn.
I can’t say that I have all the answers. In fact, I’d love to hear everyone else’s experiences with gender diversity in tech. Prior to coming into this field two years ago, I knew nothing about tech. I wikied what a startup was, thought that tech was an industry filled with men and that programming was an isolated, boring experience. Little did I know, coding is incredibly collaborative, fun, and the community itself wants to change.
It’s been two years and I’m still here. I stay because I have surrounded myself with a community that I love and people I enjoy working with. I think that’s pretty great. So let’s make this an experience open to everyone.
** Although this post focuses primarily on gender diversity due to the nature of my talk at the Women Techmakers conference, I do want to stress that there are other forms of diversity that our industry should and can improve on, including race, disabilities, trans, and sexual orientation.
