Challenging the Code — Addressing the Gender Gap in Technology
On September 29th, John Hancock’s Lab of Forward Thinking (LOFT), Global Women’s Alliance, and Continuum Innovation held a public HUBweek event: a screening of CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap and a panel discussion featuring five women in the Boston tech community. For the last two months, I worked along with my team at the LOFT to bring the event to the Boston innovation community and add John Hancock’s voice to the national conversation about gender diversity in technology.
The film describes both the pipeline problem — how to get young women interested in computer science in a culture that steers them in other directions — and the retention problem — how to keep women working in technology in workplaces that are rarely supportive.
I’ve witnessed the pipeline problem firsthand. When I enrolled in computer science classes at college, I found support and homework help from my peers in a “dorm community” designated for computer science students. I noticed the gender disparity the first time I walked in. Groups of young men sat scattered on couches, working together to solve problem sets and joking around.
The few women I saw in my classes were nowhere to be seen.
I investigated further and found that the university had placed female computer science students in a different dorm community entirely — there weren’t enough women to occupy an entire wing of the “computer science” dorm. As a result, they were isolated from the homework help, camaraderie, and computer science events enjoyed by the men.
It was a physical manifestation of the gender gap in technology and I saw it within the first week of entering the computer science field.
As the film explained, my female peers in overwhelmingly male classrooms graduate and enter overwhelmingly male workplaces. Few encounter supportive environments. Many experience harassment themselves; most know a friend or colleague who has. The stories are heart-wrenching, doubly so for their frequency. Data suggests that these stories are rules, not exceptions.
Our panelists shared powerful experiences of their time in the workplace and offered advice to young women in the audience. They didn’t agree on everything — there was a spirited discussion about Human Resources — but they agreed that it was essential for all to speak up against harassment and for women to support each other.
I’m proud to have played a part in contributing to this conversation at John Hancock. But I am aware of the limits of discussion. Diversity must be more than a talking point; inclusion must move from a principle to a practice.
As a company, we can offer financial and in-kind support to organizations devoted to creating the next generation of technology leaders like Girls Who Code. We can establish a presence at conferences dedicated to women in technology like the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. We can make connections with organizations that have made conscious efforts to hire and retain more women in technical roles. We can train employees to recognize unconscious biases. We can connect female technologists in our company to student technologists in our community.
As men who care about gender equity, we must learn to listen before we speak. We must support our female colleagues and speak up with them against harassment. We must create environments that are welcoming to all. If we are in positions to hire, we must make sure that those we interview look different than our view in the mirror.
I know that change is possible. The film highlights Etsy, a company that diversified its engineers by funding grants for women training in technology at the Hacker School. Companies that have dedicated themselves to closing the gender gap have seen success.
More companies should dedicate themselves to the creation of balanced teams of men and women and develop healthy workplace environments supportive to all. They should hire female technologists and work hard to retain them, offering opportunities for career growth. If diversity of thought is essential for growth, then diversity in gender is a crucial component. The success of companies should mirror the success of the female technologists they hire.
Thanks to the work of a group of committed male and female computer science students that lobbied for a change, my school fixed its housing practices. By my second year on campus, women were housed on the same floor as men in computer science. There weren’t many of them — six by my count in my sophomore year — but now we are all together.
You can watch the panel discussion on Periscope here.
