Women in Tech: Where Do We Go From Here?
Last year, 2018, was a milestone year for women. Industries ranging from tech to entertainment, and everything in between, took a hard look at issues of inclusion regarding women, in a movement championed by brave members of that gender who pointed out the many areas in which we still lag behind.
The results were powerful. Over the last year, we’ve seen legislative moves, initiatives like Melinda Gates’s Reboot Representation Tech Coalition; and diversity talks from compelling advocates like Kesha Williams, the software engineering manager at Chick-fil-A, about the goal of boosting women’s representation.
Headlines like these gave me hope. But as a female executive in a male-dominated industry, I can’t help but continue to question what comes next. Women in STEM are grossly underrepresented — making up just 26 percent of the computing workforce for instance — and make on average $16,000 a year less than our male counterparts.
So, setting parameters or quotas was a good starting point for inclusion, but we need to take things a step further. How can women, and our male allies, continue to chip away at inequality?
We need to re-examine how the tech industry — and workplaces in general — address differences and ensure diversity is intrinsic in the technology we build. Here’s how.
Don’t eliminate “gender” from the conversation. Don’t ignore “identity.”
Before we can address representation in the companies we lead and work for, we need to look at how the tech industry handles differences at its highest level. Faced with potential gender issues, many tech companies are quick to try to eliminate gender from the conversation entirely. For example, Google recently removed gendered pronouns from Gmail’s Smart Compose feature to avoid AI bias. The sentiment was genuine, but the approach missed the mark.
In fact, we can’t ignore people’s identities — including gender, race, ethnicity, age, background and the like — because these things are core to our humanity. We need to find a way to recognize and celebrate all of these differences, in the technology and products we build, and in the companies, we lead, rather than erasing them for the sake of simplicity.
If we encourage everyone to be the same, then the technology we build will only serve a small population and fail to serve the majority of people in the world.
Find, or create, the right tools.
Another way to prevent technology from perpetuating inequality is to ensure that people have equal access to the tools they need to develop tech that works for their communities.
Hire consciously, and champion male allies.
A lot of the conversation around representation calls for more women and people of diverse backgrounds at the table. In turn, we need to recognize our male allies and make sure they’re present, too.
Cultivate a culture of challenging conversations, openness, and honesty.
One thing I’ve realized in being a female leader is that you can’t shy away from tough conversations. Biases exist, and social norms and stereotypes need to be chipped away at.
Check all judgments at the door.
In 2019 and beyond, ensuring women — and people of different backgrounds — a seat at the table needs to be more than just a checkbox for “diversity.” Women have valuable expertise and perspectives, and they should be included, recognized and compensated based on those merits, identity aside.
Source – www.entrepreneur.com
