Why Emerging Tech Needs Women
Gender diversity in tech has been much discussed in recent years. It is a now an almost universally accepted problem, although unfortunately one for which there has yet to be universally agreed upon solutions. And this can have dire ramifications for innovation in new and emerging technologies — something that has a profoundly negative knock-on impact for healthcare and further increases the gap between men and women.
Women In Tech: The Numbers
When researchers spoke to more than 2,000 post-GCSE students in 2017, just 3% of females said they viewed tech as a first-choice career. Only 15% of all people working in IT and computing roles in the UK are female. One of the main problems appears to be retention for women in STEM fields that is a key matter for consideration. It is undeniable that women are being hired into prominent positions, but a study by the Harvard Business Review shows that 50% of women in these STEM fields will leave because of hostile work environments.
The numbers are even more alarming when it comes to emerging tech. R&D in AI and machine learning, VR and blockchain are snowballing in terms of funding and ambition, but these essential platforms are male-dominated. For example, WIRED recently reviewed Google’s AI research pages. They found 641 listed as working on “machine intelligence,” of whom only 10% were women.
A continuing lack of diversity in the development of tech presents huge problems for users — primarily women and children. New technologies should hold benefits for all, but too often male dominance means they are not tested on women enough and are not designed with them in mind. Indeed, all too often, female issues are simply not considered at all.
This is an historic problem in design. For example, female drivers are 47% more likely to be seriously injured in a car crash because seat belts are more dangerous for women. This is because when safety regulations were originally introduced in the 1960s, regulators wanted to require the use of two crash test dummies — a 95 percentile male and a 5 percentile female. This would have meant that only 5% of men were larger than and 5% of women were smaller than the crash test dummies. Automakers forced a 50 percentile male (the average man). Testing also failed to take into account pregnancy, the resulting changes to the body, and the potential risks that holds for women and the baby.
This issue is still seen in the tech market today, and is largely down to a primarily male line up of developers. Wearables are one example. Marija Butkovic, the co-founder of Women of Wearables, explained that: “Very often men manage wearable tech teams and then go on to hire male designers and developers who develop technology that most appeals to their gender. This results in a large proportion of wearables appealing only to men, not women, which fails to address a huge chunk of potential wearable tech customers.”
This means that, despite there now being a more diverse line-up of products on the market, wearables were oversized, clunky and not tailored for women at all, with commentators such as MarketWatch’s Therese Poletti complaining that even the smaller Apple Watch models “appear too big for smaller wrists.”
Sexist Data Means Sexist AI
In AI, too, the potential for gender bias to creep into datasets could prove highly dangerous when training machine learning algorithms. For example, Apple found itself in hot water last year when users noticed that writing words like ‘CEO’ resulted in iOS offering up the ‘male businessman’ emoji by default. Another well-publicised example was Google Translate and its interpretation of gender-neutral phrases in Turkish. The words ‘doctor’ and ‘nurse’ are gender neutral, yet Google translated ‘o bir doktor’ and ‘o bir hemşire’ into ‘he is a doctor’ and ‘she is a nurse’ respectively.
A diverse team of developers that can identify and fix this is one of many safeguards that can be used to prevent a twisted, sexist version of AI being developed. This is not to say that people aren’t trying. Industry leaders such as Google have taken steps to implement new hiring policies and change the internal structure of their workplaces. There are now many programmes aimed at introducing more women to tech. However, there is still a long way to go to make the tech world a more level place and the stats are concerning. With technologies such as blockchain beginning to move from theory into development, it is vital that we end the reliance on male designers and focus on male needs as soon as possible.
On International Women’s Day, Primalbase will welcome women from across the tech sector to use its coworking spaces free of charge. Email primal@primalbase.com if you’d like to be part of it.
