Women In Cyber & Gender Equality: How to Create Diversity
In 1970, 5% of women were part of performing musicians in the top 5 orchestras in the United States.
Still today, women are underrepresented in positions involving power, policy and decision-making. Women represent 49.55% of the worldwide population, with 54.8% in Belarus, 55.9% in Estonia, 53.5% in Germany, as per The World Bank. Thus, women represent half of the worldwide population, and as low as 5 per cent are involved in States’ governance, c-level executive roles, and top positions in international organizations.
Despite the improvement and progression that women have made in the past 30 years in parliaments and middle management levels, their presence represents less than 10 percent and less than 20 percent correspondingly.
Women are still denied equal access to high-status and high paying positions with highly impactful decision making roles. Countries like France, Venezuela have set up special quotas to guarantee women more equal opportunities. Is this the solution to the problem?
The percentages of female employees working at major tech companies is pretty low with: 33% at Facebook, 26% at Microsoft, and 31% at Google. Technical positions show even worse disparity between both genders.
Within the cyber security industry, many insisted that the issue is related to girls not being interested in the field at a young age. Thus, this renders into less women in the security workforce. However, researches confirm that girls have very good results in mathematics and science courses, similar to their male peers. Therefore, that cannot be defined as a valid reason.
Coming back to the initial example, the female musician percentage of highly recognized orchestras increased to 35%. Did that happen naturally? The answer is NEGATIVE. It started changing after integrating blind auditions in the 1970s and 1980s. A simple curtain transformed what an orchestra looked like and brought more diversity and equality into the mix.
A few weeks ago, I had a fascinating discussion with an active young cyber security professional Nicole Lamoureux. Nicole suggested to involve blind recruitment into our field to reduce the gap.
As per some analysis from the Internet, even computer programs are able to integrate our human biases into their processes. Researchers have found that even recruitment algorithm might adapt to our preconceptions and stereotypes. Integrating Artificial Intelligence in the programs might perpetuate stigmas.
What is the problem ?
Research from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) about “Are boys and girls equally prepared for life?” reveals that students’ behaviour towards mathematics are defined by the age of 15. Girls feel nervous about mathematics and lack confidence in their own skills and potential, even when girls and boys perform equally. Girls need to believe that they can significantly achieve for them to succeed. This is proven even at a later stage for young women, evolving in their careers.
Stereotypes are countless and might be related to cultures, history, and many other factors. They are often inaccurate. This is also not a conscious behaviour but an unconscious bias that is perpetuating over generations. It can be addressed through acknowledgement and mature behaviour to build a fair future for the next generations.
The problem starts from an initial point where individuals associate a role model to a gender. An interesting experiment was about analyzing the picture of a self-driven successful entrepreneur that people visualize. It did happen that in people’s mind, this was equivalent to a charismatic white man. A substantial number of studies have also proven that powerful women, leaders face a “the unlikeable” phenomenon. It means that the women leading, powerful, taking decisions is less likeable by individuals than her male counterparts. These emotional variations are due to the perception of violating a norm. The norm that has been there for generations and over decades created these unconscious biases. Additionally, as per these findings, usually, people violating norms are not found attractive or likeable in most cases.
These unconscious biases are hard to fight. They require an acknowledgment from the individual and a total maturity to address the issue.
Creating Role Models
Imagine you are still at school, and the teacher is organizing a session to introduce engineering. In most cases, the speaking professional will be a male. Is that the problem? The problem is that we need to showcase both possibilities/lives to the kids, including male and female role models. This will allow them to project themselves in the defined roles. On the other hand, the professionals will represent role models for the kids.
Kids and teenagers are easily influenceable and are in search for their role models. They help them build their vision of the future. They support them to take their future decisions and develop their career. One of the important attributes of the role model is inspiration. Teenagers look for an individual who can inspire them, transmit passion, and set values for them. Passion is proven to be contagious. Thus, if a class can have diverse role models, they will acknowledge various opportunities. They will also be curious about the individual and, therefore, try to understand and discover more about the expertise.
Role models show passion for their work and have the capacity to infect others with their passion. Speaking of several of his teachers, one student said, “They’re so dedicated to teaching students and helping students and empowering students. That is such a meaningful gesture. They are always trying to give back to the next generation. That inspires me.”
Kids need to build their personality through admiration of their role models. It does help them understand themselves. Therefore, role models need to show the kids that success — pursuing a passion — is possible for anyone, regardless of gender and color.
Therefore, the first step to make a change is to define programs in schools, where we showcase various opportunities to the kids, and introduce male and female role models.
Shaping Norms
Social change is a core concept. “The only thing that is constant, is change”.
Things have changed in our societies since decades and they will continue to change. However, the social change takes longer to be effective and to make an impact. Social movements like Woman In Cyber are part of a movement to change and impact our communities.
We are handling a legacy for generations, with defined norms, around behaviours, communications, ethics, and much more. The current enormous evolutions in the World, make these norms not anymore valid or efficient for a better society.
Now that female employment in widespread common, do we react with surprise when we hear a female CEO ? Or do we feel confused if a mother is working ? We still do when we hear a female hacker !
The norm of visualizing an individual running a company as a male is still present, but it has evolved and will continue to evolve. Without impacting these norms, we might not be able to prompt positive social change. Women employment has proven to be economically viable and beneficial, around the World.
Social norms and their link to role models for the kids at school is a rational connection. How do we change unconscious biases ? How do we make sure that a male colleague is not surprised anymore by a female counterpart ?
Making it a norm at schools will educate a workforce without unconscious biases. The social institution of education plays a major part in the social change. Education is an institution made up to raise and educate the future population of the World. This needs, of course, to be supported by the family environment. Parents should encourage their kids to discover their potential without biases and without imposing the “old norms”.
Designing Change
For several years, we have been advocating diversity with words however plausible change is still far away from our daily lives. Small actions can always make a big impact. They will need numbers to influence and change the world. Within the cyber security space, I am highly confident that a strong role model culture can define the future workforce in the industry, in conjunction with appropriate recruitment diversity policies, and inclusion programs. The inclusion programs should be valid for all international and national cyber security conferences, where we see non-diversified speakers and panels in most cases.
Using our joint forces to make a change, we can build together a more balanced secure World. Join me, I am Magda Chelly, A CyberFeminist Hacker.
References:
- https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/PIF-2014-gender-international-version.pdf
- https://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/Worldswomen/WW1990.pdf
- http://www.worldbank.org
#career #relationships #empowering #healthcoaching #cyber #cybersecurity #womanincyber
By Magda Chelly:
Former Chief Security Officer | Author & Keynote Speaker | IFSEC Global Top 20 Cybersecurity Influencer | Entrepreneur | PhD, S-CISO, CISSP, Cert SCI (General Insurance)
Find out on magda-on-cyber.com
Awards
- The IFSEC Global influencers in security and fire 2021
- Top Women in Security Asean Region 2021 Awards https://www.asiapacificsecuritymagazine.com/winners-and-judges-of-the-top-women-in-security-asean-region-2021-awards/
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