Advancing Women in Technology by Caroline Simard
October 23, 2009
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I don’t know about you, but I’m confused. There has been a lot of media attention on research on women’s issues recently (most notably in Time Magazine, covered again on NPR’s Talk of the Nation), which is a great thing, considering that only two generations ago women didn’t factor in research agendas.
However, as I read all the coverage, I am getting some serious mixed messages:
- Women have made it! They will outnumber men in the workforce by the end of the year, a statistic widely reported in the news! Time Magazine finds that 60% of men believe there are no longer barriers to women’s advancement in the workplace. So, finally, parity has been reached! …. But wait, women still earn 77 cents on the dollar and are all but absent from the executive suite. Oops.
- Attitudes have changed! Time reported that 89% of men are comfortable with women earning more money than men in the household. And, 76% say that it’s a positive trend that women are half the workforce. Hurray! Wait a minute… 65% view the fact that children are bring raised with no stay-at-home-parent has negative impacts on society, and 57% of men say it’s better for the family if the father works and the mother takes care of the kids. What? Are we saying that it’s great that women are in the workforce as long as they aren’t mothers?
- Gender roles and stereotypes are gone! Women are astronauts, truck drivers, doctors, lawyers, politicians… you name it, we have done it, and we are not bound by gender stereotypical roles of nurturing and cleaning. Yay! Equality and freedom has been reached! Oh wait… 70% of women still report bearing the brunt of child rearing and household chores, and only 26% of women can claim a 50/50 split in household responsibilities. The NYTimes published a piece recently highlighting the myth of “choice” for women when it comes to having a career and a family (http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/the-opt-out-myth/ink).
- OK, so it’s not perfect. But we finally have it all! Surely we are happier? Not. It turns out study after study shows women’s happiness has been steadily declining since the 1970s.
So which is it? Have we made real progress or not? Like most complex social issues, the answer is, it’s relative.
When I interviewed scored of technical women for ABI’s research, I heard from the more senior ones that things have significantly improved – say, the overt hostility and sexual harassment that they had to go through at the beginning of their careers are no longer rampant in today’s environment. On the other hand, progress seems at times tenuous and painfully slow – in 2007, we had 25 women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. In 2008, we were down to 12. It seems like the numbers are still so small that it’s all too easy to turn back progress.
The answer to the question of whether things are looking up for women is an issue I struggle with, both as a researcher of women’s issues and as a mother. The research tells me that deeply rooted stereotypical assumptions and inequality in organizations and society at large still exist. But the mother in me wants to agree with my daughter, who at 12 years old insists on telling me that “things are equal now” and that I don’t need to focus my work on this issue anymore. Wouldn’t it be great if I could look at her and say “you are right, by the time you grow up you won’t get paid less than your male colleagues, you will have the same chances for advancement, and you won’t feel guilty for having a career and a family. I want to.
I would love to hear your thoughts on how far the issue of gender equality has come, and what remaining barriers you see in the workplace and in society in general. Is gender equality fact or fiction? Comment here, or email me at info@anitaborg.org
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October 20, 2009
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At the Grace Hopper Conference, I had the chance to meet Ekaterina Fedotova the director for Information Dissemination and Equal Access (IDEA) project in Russia. Ekaterina is the 2009 winner of the Anita Borg Social Impact award.
Ekaterina’s work brings computer skills to underserved and disadvantaged populations in 51 cities across Russia’s 42 regions. Her work embodies technology for social good. For the people who participate in the IDEA program, most of whom are over 35, the training can be life changing as the classes bring skills that allow participants to grow their careers by providing much needed technical skills.
It is because of the impact of the IDEA centers that the project has grown – today to over 60 centers and plans to expand to the Ukraine over the next year. Ekaterina is an inspiration, and her work sets the standard for what is possible.
I also had the chance to meet Nadya Mason, this years Denice Denton Emerging Leader award winner. Nadya is an assistant professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has established herself as a leader in the ambitious area of the quantum limits of low dimensional systems. What makes Nadya unique is that she is both committed to an ambitious research agenda, and finds time to be a spokesperson for increasing diversity in physics.
These two women are remarkable role models in technology. I look forward to tracking their career, and their future. It was an honor to meet both of them.
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September 25, 2009
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Next week is our major conference, the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (www.gracehopper.org), so I’ve got networking on the brain. The main goal of this technical conference is to provide women in technology with broad opportunities for increasing their visibility, networking, breaking feelings of isolation, role models and building community.
Previous research has shown that women in technology are less likely to have access to social networks at work and more likely to feel isolated. Yet, these networks ties are essential for career advancement.
I dove into the networking habits of Silicon Valley technology employees from our dataset of 1,795 technical men and women, and here’s what I am finding out:
- Technical men are significantly more likely to report that they take coffee breaks or other breaks with colleagues several times a week or more (41%) than women (31%). If a lot of connections, insider info, and innovation happen at the “water-cooler/coffee machine,” then women are losing out.
- Similarly, 66% of technical men report that they take the time to chat around the office with colleagues several times a week or daily, compared to 54% of technical women.
- 13.7% of men versus 6.4% of women report that they play sports or games with colleagues a few times a month or more.
What drives this difference? Think of it as a vicious cycle – people are more comfortable networking with people who are like them, so when you are the odd woman out in an organization which is predominantly male, you get fewer opportunities to naturally network. Which in turns further discourages you from reaching out to your peers. Which leads to feelings of exclusion, less access to critical information, fewer mentors, and fewer career opportunities. Being pro-active about networking when you are the minority is also more awkward, because you have fewer things in common with those you are trying to network with. I once talked to a young technical woman who was spending her free time reading up on football, even if she personally did not care for the sport, because she had figured out that it was the ticket to starting a conversation and “fitting in” within her department. Some networking activities can also feel non-inclusive – one of my colleagues worked in a high-tech company where networking and significant business dealings at an annual conferences happened in a strip club. For another colleague, it was late-night poker and cigar smoking.
So, what’s a woman in technology to do? Jo Miller, CEO of Women’s Leadership Coaching, answered that question on our website recently. Miller advises treating networking as a critical part of one’s work and figuring out the norms that hold networks together http://anitaborg.org/news/archive/ask-jo-how-can-i-break-into-male-networks/. Jo also featured a column emphasizing that you do not need to network with everyone to maximize your network – she highlights 5 types of people you should target to include in your network http://anitaborg.org/news/archive/ask-jo-6. I also love the Grace Hopper blog’s advice on networking tips for introverts http://ghcbloggers.blogspot.com/2009/09/on-being-shy-connector.html. Maria Klawe, President of Harvey Mudd College, also shared her advice on our site and discusses how her network was instrumental in getting her nominated to the Microsoft Board. (http://techher.blogspot.com/2009/07/network-network-network-by-guest.html
Finally, it goes without saying that a company where all the networking happens through non-inclusive activities is sending a red flag in terms of how serious it is about attracting and retaining diverse talent.
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September 8, 2009
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This week, I attended a workshop convened by the National Academy of Engineering Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medecine. The CWSEM Committee focused its efforts this year on entrepreneurial careers for women engineers and scientists.
Why are there so few women technology entrepreneurs? How can we encourage and support more women to start companies? Why is high-tech lagging behind other industries in gender equity in entrepreneurship?
One of the most startling datapoints that came out of the workshop, in my opinion, is a research finding by the Diana Project showing that a paltry 5% of all venture capital investments in high-growth ventures went to women owned firms from 1953 to 2001. The Kauffman Firm Survey, which performed a detailed analysis of 570 high-tech firms, found that 18% of those firms had a primary owner that was female. The data, however, found extremely few occurrences of women-owned firms with outside equity. In this universe of firms, male high tech entrepreneurs get 11% of total financing in formal equity, whereas women only get 1.6%. Ouch.
Why do women high-tech entrepreneurs receive so few venture capital dollars? The reasons reviewed at the workshop, which all have some support from various studies, are as follows:
- Women entrepreneurs tend to have smaller social networks, and their networks often lack the kind of breadth and diversity that yields most benefits.
- Women entrepreneurs have different motivations for starting companies than their male peers, including a need for flexibility that can lead them to choose to found lower-growth companies and therefore not seek venture capital.
- Women entrepreneurs experience bias and stereotyping and are less likely to receive funding for equal competence. Research presented at the workshop by my co-panelist Candy Ku of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford showed that high tech entrepreneurship is construed in a masculine lens and that women are less likely to get funded for equivalent proposals.
All of these reasons are valid. I find that the bias one is the hardest to tackle, because it is often unconscious. One way to mitigate this bias, the same research suggests, is to have more women venture capitalists, ensuring a diversity of perspectives in funding decisions. Unfortunately, women venture capitalists are even rarer than women high-tech entrepreneurs.
Meanwhile, a male view of tech entrepreneurship is so ingrained that eminent venture capitalist John Doerr, in a public address in 2008, provided the following advice to would-be investors: “invest in white male nerds who've dropped out of Harvard or Stanford." Not exactly a prescription for the diversity of ideas.
Are venture capitalists active in fixing the problem? Jeff Nolan, a former VC and well-known Silicon Valley blogger, put the issue squarely on the table recently, saying: “If our solution is that a bunch of white men, young and middle aged predominately, are going to solve the bulk of problems from here on out, then we will neither be very good at it on a global scale nor efficient as a society in lifting earning power and real economic growth across the board.” In other words, this isn’t just a women’s issue. It’s an issue that Venture Capitalists should care about, if they are truly looking for the best ideas and investments.
Can you name technology firms that have a woman founder and are backed by venture capital? Let’s ask these women entrepreneurs how they did it and what they learned. And let’s get VCs engaged in a conversation of change.
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September 1, 2009
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Each year at the Anita Borg Institute’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference, I have the privilege to recognize the Anita Borg Technical Leadership award recipient. Role models are so important to the community of technical leaders, and the list of past recipients of the Anita Borg Technical Leaders award includes women with world changing contributions. This year’s winner is no exception.
Ruzena Bacjcsy is a professor at UC Berkeley, with a remarkable track record of firsts. She came to Berkeley as the founding director of the Center for Information Technology
Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS). CITRIS is an Institute at UC Berkeley whose mission is to create information technology solutions for many of our most pressing social, environmental, and health care problems. Ruzena was the first women to head the Directorate of Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) at NSF. While at CISE in NSF, she worked to establish financial support for large research initiatives, ultimately acquiring over 200 million dollars in research funds. NSF is one of the primary funding agencies for the computing research community, and this support has led to untold research breakthroughs that affect our lives and our world.
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Dr. Bajcsy’s research has had a profound impact on the field of active vision, and computer vision algorithms for medical imagining and telepresence.
Ruzena deserves this award in every way imaginable – because of her ground breaking technical leadership, as a well respected leader within the Computing Community, and for her commitment to mentor and support the women who come behind her.
I originally met Ruzena at the first Grace Hopper Conference in 1994, where she was one of the plenary speakers. Our paths have continued to cross over the last 15 years. As her stature and contributions have continued to grow, she has always found the time to support the work of the Anita Borg Institute – to increase the participation of women in all aspects of technology and to increase the positive impact of technology on the world’s women. She has always made the time to be available for anything we’ve asked of her.
I am proud of the contributions and impact of this year’s winner. I am equally proud to see the magnificence of Ruzena’s contributions to the world, and to the computing discipline. She is one more example of our best hopes and dreams of women who are changing the world.
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August 27, 2009
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“Technology for Social Good” It is the theme of this year’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. So many people,
especially women, would love to find a job where their work contributes to the greater good. There are many examples of people whose lives and work embody technology for social good.
One of the most interesting and impactful is Mary Lou Jepsen. Mary Lou was the founding Chief Technology
Officer for One
Laptop per Child, an organization whose mission is to deliver low-cost laptops to children in developing countries. Mary Lou led the development of the product, but as a technologist, was most influential in her invention of the laptop’s innovate
display screen, providing low power and quality at a low enough price to make the laptop viable.
In 2008, Mary Lou founded a new
company called Pixel Qi. Building on
her demonstrated technology vision from One Laptop per Child, she is developing a new screen technology. The technology is low power, with display capable of text for the emerging
e-book market. As a Kindle user, I am appreciative of the capability of this new product as it provides the potential for color and video.
So as you can see, Mary Lou embodies the characteristics of a visionary technologist whose work includes products have huge impact on the world.
What is most impressive about Mary Lou is the impact she has on the next generation of women technologist.
She was the keynote of the 2008 Grace Hopper Conference. The feedback from the attendees found them profoundly inspired by her and her work,much beyond other speakers we’ve featured who are more famous, or even more charismatic. Last spring, when many
women blogged about role models on Ada Lovelace Day,
I was surprised by the number of women who blogged about Mary Lou.
It was a reminder to me of the importance of examples of Technology for Social Good, and the role models we aspire too.
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August 9, 2009
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The theme of our annual Grace Hopper Celebration this year is “Technology for Social Good.” What does technology for social good represent? Is technology beneficial or harmful to society? Technology has had both negative and positive consequences on our world. The interaction between human nature and technology has always been one of a difficult balance. As James
Burke, scientific historian, writes "the moment man first picked up a stone or a branch to use as a tool, he altered irrevocably the balance between him and his environment” –James Burke, Connections.
This human capacity has led to both significant societal advances and significant destruction. Our ability to innovate in all spheres of life has left us with massive environmental destruction on our hands – and we are only beginning to understand the magnitude of the problem we have created. The combination of technology and capitalism has increased inequality between rich and poor, and we see increasing disparity between who can access the immense wealth of information afforded by digital technology and those who cannot access it around the world. For those of us who have access to this technology, there is increased concern about spam, information security, and user-privacy.
On the flip side, technology has also improved millions of lives: medical breakthroughs such as new medicine and life saving medical devices, such as the artificial heart pump, and the robotic arm that was invented by NASA scientists for space exploration, now used for surgery. Massive gains in efficiency in food distribution has significantly reduced hunger in developed
countries. Digital technology has also served as a force for the
democratization of education and knowledge in industrialized countries, putting information at the fingertips of millions. It has also given a voice to many of us, through participatory information sharing with the advent of blogging and social networking. Technology has significantly improved our standard of
living, from food distribution channels to washing machines and microwave ovens. Technology, and digital technology in particular, has made us closer across boundaries. Technology is also at the core of our ability to solve the environmental problems that we created.
In order to increase our potential to harness the positive impact of technology, a diversity of voices must be a part of technology creation and use. In “Unlocking the Clubhouse,” researchers found that women’s motivation for entering computing fields was frequently associated with a desire to effect
positive social impact through computer science.Our data of 1795 technical men and women in Silicon Valley shows that technical women are significantly more likely than technical men to value working for a company that
is socially responsible. 66% of women and 51% consider the social
responsibility of their companies as being very or extremely important to them.
There is a critical opportunity for computer science and engineering education to start conveying the possibilities to young children and college students. Indeed, as Margolis and Fisher state in Unlocking the Clubhouse, computer science curricula are often solely focused on programming and its technical aspects, without providing the context of larger purpose, and this focus leaves out those women who are motivated by “real-world contexts and concerns” (p.56). We need to start spreading the word: a career in science and technology can be a powerful tool for positive1 social impact.
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August 3, 2009
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Telle Whitney, CEO, Anita Borg Institute
For much of July, I was in Turkey and Greece,on a much needed vacation, away from email and cell phones. My first day back in the office, I moderated a panel for Leadership America! Yes, I agree this was a crazy commitment, but the efforts of this group inspired me.
Leadership America is a program of the Women’s Museum in Texas. It has been around for 20 years, and many senior corporate executives have passed through its program. What I like about their current offerings, is that it offers its participants programming in
three different geographical areas (Chicago, Silicon Valley, and DC). Because of this diverse programming, a participant would leave the six month program with exposure to very different businesses and business paradigms. They are also offering a trip to China later this year, which is very exciting.
The panel that I moderated brought together several technology leaders to discuss technology, and its impact on being a great leader. Participating in this panel were three extraordinary people, with diverse perspectives:
James Beck,
COO and Managing Director, Mayfield
James brings a wealth of knowledge about growing venture funding worldwide, as Mayfield has opened new funds in China and India over the last few years.
Rebecca
Norlander, Partner & Engineering Manager, Microsoft
Rebecca’s degrees are in Computer Science, and she has a deep technical expertise, but has successfully moved up the leadership ladder at Microsoft.
Dorothy
Farris, VP, Worldwide Sales, Jupiter Systems
Dorothy brings many years as a successful sales executive to the conversation.
We had a robust conversation about the role that technology plays in building leaders. Some of the words of wisdom that I heard
were:
- Blackberry’s and Cell phones are tools that can aid
or hinder you as a leader. What is
most important in effective use of these devices is to ensure that you set
personal boundaries of when you use them, and they don’t become a constant
and unwelcome diversion.
- The world has become global, and many teams are
global in nature. This creates a
new set of problems that leaders need to understand and embrace, including
simple logistical issues such as conference call times that a team spanning
China, US, and Israel can
all make. Understanding your team constraints and finding solutions is an
important part of being an effective global leader.
- Innovation is happening, and it happening world wide.
Harnessing the power of innovation in multiple countries is part of what
will make entrepreneurs successful in this next century.
- Entrepreneurial solutions to sales, engineering,
investing and innovation are where all of our panelists found exciting
opportunities. None of them accept the status quo, but instead are looking
for new ways to approach their job.
Technology, be it social networks, or mobile devices, are part of
the innovation that they regularly use in their jobs.
I left the panel tired, but inspired by not only these remarkable people, but
the thoughtful conversation with the Leadership America participants.
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July 27, 2009
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The police arrest of Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. of Harvard University, and President Obama’s comments on the incident, has re-ignited a national debate about race, bias, and stereotyping in the US. Regardless of the specifics of the Gates incident, African-American and Latinos in the US routinely experience bias and stereotyping, and social science data on the topic is sobering. If you want to learn about how that bias plays out early in terms of access to science and engineering education, read Stuck
in the Shallow End, where Dr. Jane Margolis and her colleagues discuss the ongoing segregation of opportunity at the K-12 level. To learn more about how bias and stereotyping plays out in the workplace, read The Level Playing Field Institute Corporate Leavers Survey. To test your own stereotypical assumptions, visit Project Implicit, a research project at Harvard University.
Fortunately, amidst the sobering news and data, there are programs working to increase the proportion of underrepresented minority students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines.
The
Empowering Leadership Alliance (EL Alliance), funded by the National Science Foundation, aims “to increase the number of students from groups with long-standing
underrepresentation that receive undergraduate and graduate degrees in the computing disciplines.” Dr. Richard
Tapia, whom I blogged
about last week, University Professor at Rice University,
is the Principal Investigator of the alliance. This week, I interviewed Dr. Tapia as well as Ann
Redelfs and Cynthia Lanius, who are co-leaders and co-founders of the alliance.
The EL-Alliance creates a national network of committed academics, industry, and government representatives to increase diversity in computing. In order to bring more women and underrepresented minorities in technology, multiple educational and industry organizations need to commit to increasing their outreach, mentoring, and retention efforts.
“The most important outcome of creating this network for minority students is so they can realize they are not alone, and see that they can make it”, said Dr. Tapia. “A lot of minority students come from disadvantaged high schools and didn’t get the same opportunities and preparation to be competitive
at a major research university. We believe that the environment needs to be changed in order for them to be successful. I know from my own experience that it is possible for them to succeed given the right support.”
Lanius and Redelfs say that the EL-Alliance enhances the retention and advancement of minority students in computing disciplines through three strategies: at the local level, the alliance builds critical mass within a campus among STEM departments, whereby students can connect to each other, to
mentors, faculty, and to opportunities. At the regional level, specific regions can create critical mass; for example, the EL Alliance reached out to all the major research institutions in the Boston Area, and invited them to build a community through
the alliance, over 300 people are now engaged
from that region. The third approach is national – any minority student can join the alliance, get support, mentoring, and get connected to opportunities.
“A lot of times computer
science faculty have some opportunities for research – they want to reach out to minority students, but don’t know where to find them. The Alliance brokers these kinds of opportunities and makes sure that minority students have access to those opportunities”, says
Ann Redelfs.
The biggest challenge of the EL Alliance? Finding the isolated minority students who need them the most. “We have outreached to department chairs to increase our reach to those students,” notes Cynthia Lanius. Often, students at the freshmen level are also not aware of the need to join such an effort: “They are freshmen, they are on top of the world, and they haven’t experienced the barriers yet. By the time you get to junior year they have experienced the challenge. The EL Alliance makes sure we don’t lose them from computing disciplines”, says Dr. Tapia.
To see what is possible, take a look at the biographies of Latino and Native American scientists collected by SACNAS, an organization dedicated to advancing Hispanic and Native American scientists. Also look at this compilation of biographies of African-American
scientists.
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July 17, 2009
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Last week, I started a blog series about organizations and groups who are making a difference for underrepresented men and women in technology. Our research shows that only 6.8% of technical employees in Silicon Valley are African-American, Hispanic, or Native American, and that these underrepresented employees are significantly more likely to plan to leave their companies. The CRA Taulbee Survey shows that a mere 1% of PhD recipients in Computer Science are Hispanic, 1% are African-American, and 0% are Native American (!). These statistics haven’t changed significantly since the early 1990s.
Latinas in Computing, mentioned last week, is one group which seeks to bring the interests of underrepresented women to the forefront. Dr. Patty Lopez, Component Design Engineer at Intel, has been one of the major driver for LiC since its founding, and is a 2009 Grace Hopper Celebration Committee member – if you are coming to GHC, look for LiC sessions!
Other programs that need to be mentioned are the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing and the EL Alliance (Look the EL Alliance in next week’s blog).
Modeled on the Grace Hopper Celebration, the Richard Tapia Celebration “provides a welcoming and supportive setting for all participants and particularly for students and faculty from under-represented groups. It is aimed at providing a supportive networking environment for under-represented groups across the broad range of computing and information technology, from science to business to the arts to infrastructure”.
The Tapia Conference was named in honor of Dr. Richard A. Tapia, a mathematician and University Professor in the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Tapia is the kind of role model that defies the odds – you can read his full bio online for a massive dose of inspiration: a first-generation American from Mexican parents, he was the first in his family to attend college, and earned a PhD in Mathematics from UCLA. He is an accomplished scientist who has published over 100 papers, and he was the first Hispanic to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering. The list of awards he received and his research accomplishments is astounding. In terms of making an impact on the next generation of underrepresented technologists and scientists, he walks the talk. During his tenure at Rice University, he advised more underrepresented minority and women doctoral students than anyone else is the country. Tapia is director of the Center for Excellence and Equity in Education at Rice, where he strives to change the academic practices that re-create inequality. In a 2003 paper on diversity in academia, Tapia and colleagues lament that increasing diversity is not truly rewarded by the current academic reward system, which rewards research over teaching and mentoring activities. Yet, faculty engagement in teaching and mentoring is critical to increasing the recruitment, retention and advancement of underrepresented minorities. In a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Tapia also argues that the top-tier universities need to actively engage in becoming a part of the solution
In order to foster such mentoring opportunities, the Tapia Conference was formed to celebrate the technical contributions and career interests of diverse people in computing fields. The Conference is a project of the Coalition to Diversity Computing and is sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Computing Research Association (CRA), and the IEEE Computing Society (IEEE-CS). The CDC is a joint organization of the ACM, CRA, and IEEE-CS. The National Science Foundation is an active supporter of the conference. The conference has grown steadily in participation over the years to over 400 participants. Students, faculty, and industry participants get the opportunity to discuss technical topics while breaking down feelings of isolation, creating new professional networks, and access mentoring and professional development opportunities. I attended Tapia for the first time this year- seeing 400 participants, men and women, from diverse backgrounds, provided me with hope that it is indeed possible to increase diversity in technology. You can read Telle Whitney’s blog about our participation here.
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