Can Women be Empowered & Mobilized to be Leaders in the Technology Industry?
An inquiry into whether women can be empowered and mobilized to be leaders in the current male-dominated technology industry
By: Grace Yeung, Director of Marketing at TechTogether Boston
Introduction
We are living in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, an age characterized by the rapid emergence of technological innovations and unprecedented success for technology companies. When prompted to visualize the world’s greatest technologists, many people imagine a male computer scientist like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. This image is closely aligned with the reality of the current male-dominated technology workforce. Despite the fact that women were the pioneers of computing and modern-day female leaders have proven the value of women in tech, there is a severe gender disparity in the tech workforce. Implementing effective solutions to the gender gap requires an understanding of the compound barriers women confront in their journey through the technology pipeline. Once barriers in the tech pipeline are eliminated, the next generation of women have a higher potential to be empowered leaders in the technology industry.
Gender Composition of the Technology Workforce
Today, the technology industry has an appalling gender gap: 75% of the technology workforce in the United States is male (Scott et al, 2018). While men have dominated the tech landscape for the past few decades, the tech industry was actually established in the 1960’s by female pioneers like Jean Sammet, Frances Allen, and Margaret Hamilton. These women created the first programming languages, revolutionized the way computer systems were built, and coined terms like “software engineering” (Computer History Museum, 2009) (Steele, n.d.) (Cameron, n.d.). They paved a promising path for female technologists, and by 1991 the rate of women to men in computing careers was 36% (Ashcraft, McLain, Eger, 2016). Unfortunately, this ratio started to decline with a simultaneous decrease in the number of female computer science (CS) majors (Riculan, 2017).
Figure 1. What Happened to Women in Computer Science? (National Science Foundation, American Bar Association, American Association of Medical Colleges, 2010 as cited in Henn, 2014)
As seen in Figure 1, the percentage of women CS majors started to decrease when personal computers (PCs) surfaced in US households, which was in the early 1980’s. PCs were marketed to males so many boys grew up playing with computers and brought CS experience to college whereas girls were shamed for their lack of experience (Henn, 2014). This common occurrence coupled with success stories of male technologists like Bill Gates created a perception that computing was a more suitable career path for males. Three decades later, males still dominate the tech narrative, but there are some female leaders who succeed in the tech industry despite the gender difference in socializing children to use computers.
How Today’s Women in Tech are Changing the Tech Narrative
Megan Smith and Susan Wojcicki, two of today’s most powerful female technology leaders have stories of challenge and triumph that were largely shaped by their female identity. When Megan Smith was appointed as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the United States under President Obama, she was the first female to hold the highest technology job in America. Her story begins at her childhood, during which she excelled in science and math. This led her to study mechanical engineering at MIT, but her grandfather, also an engineer, questioned her decision to be an engineer at a time when engineering was deemed more suitable for males. Smith proved this to be a faulty, outdated stereotype when she graduated and then pioneered Apple’s smartphone development and Google’s new business development. At Google, she also launched a tech-diversity initiative called Women Techmakers (WTM) to enact unconscious bias training across the company. Today, WTM has organized global women tech conferences and created a global network to empower women in tech. Most recently, as the US CTO, she oversaw tech policies for public advancement, including solar energy innovation. Although she is now well-respected in the tech industry, she recalls distressing experiences with “corporate bullies” in Silicon Valley “who engage[d] in abusive intellectual combat, and…bystanders who enable[d] them” and her inability to advocate for herself in these situations (Fessler, 2019). Because of this, she advocates for women in tech and shares methods for their inclusion in tech:
…important behaviors, like giving some of your agency or lending power to others, formalizing inclusive coaching, and practicing graciousness. For example, reinforce what women say in meetings and proactively support all women to move forward on their ideas, programs, and work…We need to debug our workplaces and remove practices and systems that are debilitating for so many (Fessler, 2019).
Smith is a shining example for women in tech but women like Susan Wojcicki have proven that having a STEM degree is not required to be a female tech leader. Susan Wojcicki, the current CEO of Youtube, is another one of the most powerful women tech leaders; however, when she was in college, she studied history and literature at Harvard. She later obtained her MBA and settled in a home in Menlo Park, California, where she rented her garage to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google. She later joined Google as their first marketing manager. The year was 1999 and she was four months pregnant; she was the first Google employee to take maternity leave, a concept not fully embraced by the working world yet. When Wojcicki returned, she extended maternity leave for Google employees from 12 to 18 weeks, which has decreased the turnover rate for new moms by 50% (Wojcicki, 2017a). Wojcicki is also credited with the creation of Google AdSense and Google’s purchase of YouTube in 2006 (Bastone, 2018). By 2014, Wojcicki became the CEO of YouTube and has grown the user base to 1.8 billion monthly users. Even as one of the most impressive female tech leaders, Wojcicki has also experienced gender discrimination. She recalls instances of having her abilities and job commitment questioned, being excluded from industry conferences, and sitting in meetings where external stakeholders primarily addressed her junior male colleagues (Wojcicki, 2017b). Because of these experiences, Wojcicki has advocated for closing the gender gap in technology. Wojcicki has argued that implicit biases are the cause of more subtle forms of gender discrimination, like the ones that she has experienced in her career (Wojcicki, 2017a). She poses one solution for addressing gender discrimination: hiring more women. This has been at the forefront of her agenda and from 2014 to now, Wojcicki has increased the number of female employees at YouTube from 24% to 30%. Wojcicki affirms that by bringing in more female hires, companies can learn how to create a company culture that is conducive to the empowerment and advancement of their female employees.
External Structural Barriers for Women in Technology
These women are inspirational figures of success who are enabling other women to accomplish the same, but their success was a result of their persistence through the tech pipeline. These barriers are best explained by the Leaky Tech Pipeline, a framework developed by the Kapor Center for Social Capital, which frames the issue of female and racial minority underrepresentation in the technology workforce (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. The Leaky Tech Pipeline (Scott et al., 2018)
This framework begins at the early computing education stage, where there are a disproportionate number of girls enrolled in STEM classes because of gender stereotypes and low expectations for their success that are perpetuated by media and popular culture. Because of the “nerdy and antisocial male computer scientist” stereotype, many girls lack motivation to learn computer science (Scott et al., 2018). For girls who enter the technology pipeline, enrolling in courses like AP Computer Science (AP CS) is a key predictor in pursuing a CS degree in college. In 2017, only 23% of all AP CS test-takers were female (College Board, 2017). Upon graduating high school and entering college, these female CS students often study in hostile, male-dominated classrooms without sufficient female professors or mentors. Because of this, women earn only 18% of all bachelor’s degrees in computing (Scott et al., 2018) and upon entrance into the tech workforce, encounter gender biases in recruiting, interviewing, and hiring at tech companies. For the women who break into their dream tech career, gender and pregnancy discrimination, unfair promotion practices, workplace harassment, and unequal pay siphon off many women from the technology workforce into other industries. According to the AnitaB Organization, 56% of women technologists leave companies by mid-level (see Figure 3.)
Figure 3. When Women Leave Tech, Everyone Pays a Price (AnitaB.org, 2017)
Women who aspire to break into final stage of the pipeline, entrepreneurship and venture capital, have the smallest chance for success. In 2016, women-led tech companies received only 2.5% of all venture capital investments (Swenson, 2017). Without strong social or financial capital, women are unable to attain entrepreneurial or executive level success. The gender disparity in technology will continue to exist in every stage of the pipeline if comprehensive solutions to plug the leaks are not implemented. Once more women can successfully navigate the tech pipeline, future generations of aspiring female technologists will have more role models like Megan Smith and Susan Wojcicki to aspire towards, more supportive educational and professional environments, and more confidence in starting becoming tech leaders.
Internal Psychological Barriers for Women in Technology
Not only do the external barriers in the educational system and technology workforce impact the willingness and ability for women to break the glass ceiling of the tech industry, internal limiting beliefs and fixed mindsets that girls develop from a young age also inhibit them from progressing through the technology pipeline. According to Reshma Saujani, the Founder of the national non-profit, Girls Who Code:
How many career opportunities have we passed up because we were afraid of being rejected or failing? How many times have we begged off an assignment or promotion saying, “I’m just not good at that”? No question that the glass ceiling and double bind are factors in women’s advancement, but I believe our perfect-girl hardwiring is also a significant part of the reason women are underrepresented in leadership positions in the corporate world, in government, and elsewhere. It’s the fear of exposing our less-than-perfect selves, or the belief that we don’t have the ideal leadership skill that interferes, not capability (2019).
She believes that eliminating inclination towards perfectionism and building resilience through risk-taking and embracing rejection are the ways that girls can be confident leaders in the tech industry. Saujani herself took many risks, one being starting Girls Who Code without a formal computer science education (Matthews, 2018). Now, Girls Who Code is one of the world’s largest pipelines of female computer scientists, with over 185,000 girls reached through free coding programs. Saujani and Girls Who Code have sparked a shift in girls’ perspectives on tech-related careers, plugging one of the many leaks in the Leaky Tech Pipeline.
How are “Leaks” in the Tech Pipeline Being Sealed?
Solutions to seal the “leaks” in the tech pipeline range from expanding access to computing education to implementing new hiring and retention strategies that create healthy and inclusive work environments for women and marginalized racial groups (Scott et al., 2018). For the educational side, organizations like Girls Who Code are adding and retaining more girls in the early stages of the tech pipeline. Another source of community for high-school and college girls are hackathons for gender-marginalized groups like TechTogether Boston (TTB). While these intense coding marathons have traditionally been male-dominated, TTB has created inclusive and collaborative learning environments through hacker projects, technical workshops, keynote speeches, mentorship and career opportunities (Verhulst, 2019). TechTogether has taught thousands of girls from around the world that they add real value to the tech industry and funneled many talented girls into the technology pipeline. In the next part of the funnel, the tech workforce, efforts to prove the value of women in tech are working; 85% of women and 77% of men believe that mixed gender teams are more productive, innovative, and creative (AnitaB.org, 2017). Women and men must form partnerships across all levels of organizations to collaborate on gender diversity initiatives to improve work culture and hiring practices. Nonprofits such as Project Include are aiding such efforts by remodeling the hiring and retention practices in the tech workforce. Founded by inclusion advocates Ellen Pao and Tracy Chou, Project Include accelerates D & I solutions by compiling data for executives to track metrics of hiring, pay, and conflict resolution (Project Include Team, n.d.) (Thayer, 2017). These are just some of the efforts across the technology pipeline that aim to close the gender gap and retain female talent, which indicates that women have a greater chance now than ever before to be confident, powerful leaders in the technology industry.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the entire tech pipeline must be remodeled with intentional inclusion and opportunity. To accomplish this, it is critical to understand the compounding external structural and internal psychological barriers women in tech experience. Although there are many barriers that women face in the tech pipeline, efforts to plug the Leaky Tech Pipeline are succeeding with the rise of female role models, women-led tech organizations/events, and comprehensive D & I efforts. There is room for improvement in reversing inherent gender biases and discrimination, but with the shifting narrative of “girls and women in tech,” there is promise for women to be successful tech leaders in the current and future technological revolution.
