Advancing Women in Technology by Caroline Simard
February 13, 2009
12:56 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
One of the questions that arise most frequently for women considering Computing and Engineering as a career is the image of the discipline. Many young women, their parents, and their counselors believe that there aren’t any jobs (the jobs are outsourced), and that engineers sit in front of a terminal “coding” all day long.
Recently I was visiting my eye doctor, and he was talking about his young daughter who was attending a local private girl’s high school known for its science and math training. She was deciding which college to attend, and what her major would be. He rattled off her choices “bio-tech”, pre-med or “biology”. And said “of course she isn’t considering Computer Science, there are no jobs". As Caroline said, in her last post, the number of jobs in this area is increasing, and companies cannot fill the posts, but there is a perception issue, especially on the important constituency of high school parents and counselors.
What I know is that Computer Science is a discipline can lead to many careers, not just to becoming an engineer. Here are a few examples:
•CEO – There are a number of examples of CEOs whose first degree is in Math or Computer Science. Carol Bartz (http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/management.cfm), the new CEO of Yahoo, received her first degree is in Computer Science, as did Diane Greene (former president of VMWare) http://www.networkworld.com/power/2005/122605-greene.html, who has degrees in mechanical engineering and Computer Science.
•Marketing & Sales – In technical companies, it is very common for the sales and marketing team to have a technical background, it really helps them to understand the product. Carolyn Crandall, now at a Seagate company, has often talked to me about how important her technical background is for her role. http://www.i365.com/uk/en/about/executive-team/carolyn-crandall.html.
Janie Tsao, (http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2004/bio_linksys_janie_tsao.pdf) formerly VP of wordwide sales at Cisco, came from a systems analyst background.
•Entrepreneur – Both Mar Hershenson (http://www.dac.com/events/eventdetails.aspx?id=77-158) and Louse Zweben (http://techher.blogspot.com/2009/02/frpom-process-engineer-to-ceo.html) are women that I admire because their experience as technical woman, contributed to their vision of a company and they set out to make it real.
•High School Student – There are many young women who, while still in High School, contribute to the world of Computing. The NCWIT aspirations award acknowledges some of them (http://www.ncwit.org/award)
It is always hard to change the image of a discipline. By recognizing people who represent new approaches, it is possible to slowly but surely create and demonstrate a new reality.
Recommend This If you liked this, let others know:
February 6, 2009
07:36 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Computing and technical jobs in general suffer from an image problem. In this podcast John White, CEO of ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), deplores the fact that young people’s inaccurate perception of computer science is part of the reason for decreasing enrollments in the field.
<p>What do people think when they think of computing? Here are the common perceptions that keep many young women and men from entering the field. <p>
Six common perceptions of computing
1. “It’s for nerds and geeks”. In this recent New York Times article, Jan Cuny, Program Director at the National Science Foundation and a long-time expert and advocate on the issue, points to the “nerd factor” as one of the biggest deterrent for women to enter the field. Many young people think “Dilbert” when they think of computing and engineering professions.
2. “You can’t be a people person and be a computer scientist/engineer”. Playing in the geek image, the perception that computer scientists and engineers work alone, are anti-social, and don’t know how to work collaboratively is a stereotype that turns of many from computing, especially women. In their book, Unlocking the Clubhouse, Margolis and Fisher have documented how this image especially affect women’s willingness to go into computing.
3. “You can’t have a life and be a computer scientist”. Related to the anti-social nerd image, Margolis and Fisher also found that girls are also significantly influenced by the perception that the work of a computer scientist does not allow one to have work-life balance and that “real” computer scientists don’t have any other interests.
4. “The boom is over. It’s a moot field”. Since the high-tech downturn of early 2000, many young people think that computer science is no longer where they should invest for their future. UCLA’s “Freshman Survey” shows that the number of students with an interest in majoring in CS has dropped by 70% between 2000 and 2005. The Computing Research Association’s Annual Taulbee Survey has shown that enrollment in computer science degrees has been steadily declining since the “dot com bust”. Some are viewing the current economic crisis and the impact it has on declining interest in business and finance as a potential boon for computer science, but that remains to be seen.
5. “All the jobs have been outsourced to India and China”. Linked to the perception that Computing is a “moot field”, there is a widespread perception that most of the computer science jobs have been outsourced or “offshored”, mostly in China and India. Computer Science Professor Eric Roberts discusses this in his white paper This perception influences students’ willingness to invest in a CS degree, as well as parents’ advice to their children when it comes to choosing a major.
6. “You can’t change the world with computing” – related to the perception that computing is passé, some are under the impression that the field has no longer the potential to have a significant impact on the world. The sum of these perceptions brings up “A passé field for antisocial nerds where you can no longer get a good paying job and you can’t have a life”. Wow. No wonder computing has an image problem. However, the reality is very far from that perception.
Debunking the myths
1 & 2. Computing, the land of the anti-social nerds? Not so. While the media images of the profession often play into the stereotype, research shows a very different picture of the computing profession. In our study of 1795 technical men and women in the high-tech industry, we show that the most prominent work values of technical workers is Teamwork, with 90% of technical women and 86% of technical men reporting that they value teamwork. Our survey respondents also identified being collaborative as one of the top 5 success factors for people in technology (the other four being analytical, innovator, questioning, and risk-taking). The factors that were not identified with success were being geeky and isolated at the keyboard. As one of our female interviewees said, “teamwork is a key component of being an engineer. It’s not only writing code, but being able to do that in the context of working with other personalities.”
3. The high tech industry still has a lot of work to do to address the perception that work-life balance is not possible in computing positions. While progress has been made on this front, work-life balance is still very much a challenge for technical women. We will blog about that issue extensively because it merits further discussion, and provide examples of companies that are doing really well in that field and are actively debunking that myth. In our study, flexible work options were identified as a key factor for retention by mid-level women in our study, and most of the technical workers we surveyed tended to be satisfied with their company’s flexibility – men were more satisfied, with 80% saying that the flex practice at their company was good/excellent, compared to 60% of women.
4 & 5. On the perception that there are no more jobs in technology – while the industry is now global and some jobs have indeed been displaced to India, China and other countries, the ACM Job Migration Task Force report shows that the number of jobs in information technology is higher now than it was at the height of the dot-com era, and that the long term trend for growth in technology jobs in the US is very strong. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, computer software engineers are one of the occupations projected to grow the fastest and add the most new jobs over the 2006-16 decade. 6. There are still tremendous opportunities for computing – apart from being passé, it is now bringing up a world of opportunities. In fact, computing will be a part of the solution to the greatest challenges of our times: climate change and healthcare come to my mind, but the possibilities are endless……. If you are interested in imagining this future, Nature has a great series of articles on the future of computing.
If you are interested in this issue, visit the Image of Computing website (www.imageofcomputing.com) A consortium of many of our partner organization, they lead a national coordination effort to expose a realistic view of opportunities in computing and have some major public relations campaigns going on.
Recommend This If you liked this, let others know:
February 2, 2009
02:36 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
At the Anita Borg Institute, we work closely with technical women, as well as with our partner companies to develop their technical talent, especially at the mid level. As you saw from Caroline’s last post, many women in our study need to develop and update their technical skills, but are often unable to find the time to do so outside of work hours. What I also know is that many women experience a lack of confidence, and their development is not only about updating their skills, but also needing to develop the leadership skills and confidence to express their ideas. And they are also challenged by the fact they communicate differently from their male counterparts.
I heard a true story awhile ago that illustrates my point. Many large companies have a well defined Fellows process, where a Fellow is the top of the technical career path. Often there are few if any women fellows.
At one company, the chair of the Fellows committee (a man) told me about one of their earliest women fellows. He was familiar with her work, and was shocked when the entire fellows committee (all men) voted her nomination down. He took it upon himself to rewrite the nomination from a male perspective, in particular, changing the we to I in the contribution description. Many women think of their contribution as part of a team effort, they work collaboratively. Often the Fellows selection criteria focus on individual contributions. With his new nomination package, where none of the contributions had changed, she was unanimously approved to become a Fellow. As I write this blog, notice the times I’ve used the term Fellow, it is perhaps not surprising that most of the Fellows are fellows.
In addition to developing confidence and learning how to communicate effectively in their environment, I think it is important to find the time to read new books or attend conference sessions in your technical area.
When I was VP of Engineering at a Voice Over IP Processor company – Malleable Technology, I underestimated the importance of investing time in understanding more deeply the application algorithmic approach for our product offering. Because I was head of engineering, and was comfortable in the areas of running operations and developing the chip design, I did not set aside the time to understand our algorithms better. What that meant is that I was unable to speak the language of the DSP engineers that worked for me, and I lost their respect, whereas the two other groups I led – the chip design team and the software development platform team never experienced that same issue. It was not my job to become a competent DSP engineer, but in hindsight, it would have been worth my time to invest more in the technical area I was weakest.
For anyone reading this, you know best the technical skills area that will serve you, and investing time in learning is important.
Recommend This If you liked this, let others know:
January 23, 2009
08:21 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
It seems like an obvious statement: a top priority of technical employees is to develop their technical skills; technical men and women highly value such opportunities being offered by their company. Yet, many companies have moved to a model where technical employees are expected to update their technical skills “on their own time.”
If you are a technical woman, happen to have children and are in a dual career household where work-life balance challenges abound, your “own time” is an oxymoron. And in recessionary times, whatever opportunities were left to go to technical conferences tend to be cut.
The top two challenges to updating technical skills cited by the respondents to our study (www.anitaborg.org/research) were lack of time due to work commitments (79% of women and 81% of men), followed by lack of time due to family and personal commitments (58% of both men and women).
The top strategy for technical employees to update their technical skills is interaction with peers (82% of both men and women). However, not surprisingly, technical men were significantly more likely than technical women to say that they update their technical skills “on their own time” (82% of men versus 62% of women). The technical men we surveyed were also four times more likely than women to have a spouse or partner who has the main responsibility of the household and children. Only 37% of technical men in our Silicon Valley sample, compared to 79% of technical women, have a partner who works full time.
In high-tech companies, where one’s technical expertise is the ticket to advancement, opportunities to develop one’s technical skills, given fast-paced technological change, is paramount to the retention and advancement of technical women.
When asked about the importance of company practices, 84% of technical women and 82% of technical men at the mid-level said that opportunities to develop their technical skills are very or extremely important. Only the basics of healthcare benefits and financial rewards come in slightly higher, among a list of 24 benefits and practices we asked them about. Yet, when asked to rate how good the existing professional development for technical skills are at their company, only 36% of women and 34% of men rate those as good or excellent.
Given how important this issue is to technical employees, companies can do better in providing such opportunities – not only will they benefit from increased employee engagement and thus increase retention, but it will start addressing the gender inequality in advancement.
Is this an unreasonable recommendation in a recession? I don’t think so. In periods of layoffs, the remaining employees are asked to do more with less and take on new areas of responsibilities – offering them opportunities to update their technical skills to meet the current demands of the company is beneficial to the organization. Also, companies know that the laid-off of today are also the hires of tomorrow – when the demand for their skills becomes high again, male and female top technical talent will gravitate toward the companies that support their professional growth.
Recommend This If you liked this, let others know:
January 16, 2009
05:00 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Finding the right mentors can be an extremely important tool for a successful career. In my career, I’ve had a few truly important mentors, almost all of them men. On Monday, I met with one of my most important mentors, Carver Mead. Carver was my PhD thesis advisor, and had a profound influence on my thinking, on my career, and has become a dear friend.
Each mentor brings new experiences, and new ideas, but there are a few important ideas that came directly from my relationship with Carver.
1. He believed in me – At an early stage in my career, confidence was a huge issue for me (and for many women, men too, but especially women). Having someone believe in me, so that I could learn to believe in myself, was critical
2. He challenged the status quo – in science and technology, often there is a norm of thinking. Most innovation occurs at the boundaries of accepted norms, often by applying ideas from other disciplines. My thesis used circles as the basic building blocks when everyone else were using squares, and Carver used analog circuits for modeling biology when digital logic was the norm.
3. He developed collective team thinking – his students collectively formed a design team, where every member was expected to contribute, but we all listened to each other. His group was my first exposure to the best of what teams can offer.
What if you can’t find a mentor in your immediate community? There are still opportunities. The non-profit organization MentorNet provides online mentoring relationships for students and faculty. There are many examples of life changing mentoring relationships created through MentorNet. As a participant of MentorNet, you plug into a system that has been demonstrated to work for thousands of people. One of the things that I like about their approach is that the system seeds the year long ongoing email conversation between Protégée and Mentor with questions that are useful and interesting on topics, such as time management, self confidence and managing stress. For example, for students looking for a job, hearing from someone with experience about how to approach your search, can make a huge difference.
Today, as a non-profit CEO, mentors are still important to me, but often they are peers and we meet together to discuss deeply the issues and opportunities of running an organization. I’ve developed a group of peer mentors, and depending on what is going on in my life, I reach out to the appropriate person. For example, I have a group of two other women, one is a non-profit CEO, and one is a medical doctor. We’ve had breakfast every month (well almost every month) for the last five years, and we always provide three goals for the following month. This group has become a source of support and development.
Mentoring is very important to a career, especially during the early years as the ideas that will guide your future are forming. There are resources available as well as many people who would be honored to be asked.
Recommend This If you liked this, let others know:
January 9, 2009
01:24 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Mentoring has become a buzzword of sorts and a lot of ink (or typing) has been devoted to the topic. Often the first advice given to a woman starting her career in technology, “get a mentor” has become the de-facto touted solution for advancement. While mentoring has many definitions, viewing it as a relationship focused on learning is a great place to start.
There is good reason for the popularity of mentoring. Social science research has demonstrated that being mentored leads to:
- higher job satisfaction
- higher promotion rates
- higher future income
- increased work success
- higher retention rates
With such benefits, there is no reason for companies that wish to retain and advance top talent not to support mentoring. The reasons for employees to do it are similarly compelling (income, advancement, satisfaction). And yet, many people have yet to engage in mentoring or do not know where to start. Several factors, some individual and some organizational, can keep mentoring from delivering on its promise.
Individual barriers to mentoring
First, there is a problem of access. Employees who are in a minority in an organization, such as technical women or under-represented minorities, are more likely to be excluded from social networks, which makes their ability to find mentors more difficult. Women perceive more barriers in accessing a mentor, citing lack of access and the dearth of availability of female mentors.. Other researchers, also have documented how women tend to be excluded from influential social networks, further limiting their access to mentors.
Second, not everyone is ready to be mentored. Many enter mentoring relationships without having thought about what they want their career to progress to, what they want to get out of the relationship, and may not be in a place where they are self-aware enough to welcome the inevitable “feedback” that comes with a mentoring relationship.
Organizational barriers to mentoring
In the our study of technical employees in high-tech companies released last October (www.anitaborg.org/research), 4 companies out of 7 surveyed had a company mentoring program, and almost all companies had a word implying employee learning as a core value (without learning, there is no innovation – so this value makes sense for high-tech companies). Yet, despite those stated values and the existence of mentoring programs, mentoring was consistently perceived by technical employees being an unrewarded behavior.
Consider that:
- Only 19% of 1795 technical men and women surveyed say that mentoring is a very or extremely rewarded behavior in their company.
- Compare this to the 38% of men and 46% of women who say that self-promotion is a very or extremely rewarded behavior.
These statistics tell us something about the culture of high-tech companies – competition trumps developing others. This culture creates a disconnect between the policy (formal mentoring programs) and the practice (people actually using these programs) at these companies.
In our survey, 53% of technical men and 70% of technical women viewed mentoring as very or extremely important. Yet, they gave their companies poor marks in terms of delivering on the promise of mentoring – only 24% of men and 26% of women feel like their companies are doing good or excellent in mentoring.
Is mentoring then doomed for failure in high-tech companies? No – there are great examples of successful programs. Next week, Telle Whitney will detail how companies can overcome these barriers and create a mentoring program that is embedded in an organization’s culture.
References:
Fagenson, E.A. (1989). The Mentor Advantage: Perceived Career/Job Experiences of Protégés versus Non-Protégés. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 10 (4).
Noe, R.A. (1988). Women and Mentoring: A Review and Research Agenda. Academy of Management Review,13 (1), 65-78.
Ragins, B.R., & Cotton, J.L. (1991). Easier Said than Done: Gender Differences in Perceived Barriers to Gaining a Mentor. Academy of Management Journal, 34 (4): 939-951.
Ibarra, H., Paving an Alternative Route: Gender Differences in Managerial Networks. Social Psychology Quarterly, 1997. 60(1): p. 91-102.
Burt, R., The Gender of Social Capital. Rationality and Society, 1992.
Whitely, W., Dougherty, T.W., & Dreher, G.F. (1991). Relationship of Career Mentoring and Socioeconomic Origin to Managers’ and Professionals’ Early Career Progress. The Academy of Management Journal, 34 (2), 331-351.
Recommend This If you liked this, let others know:
January 3, 2009
08:47 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
IBM is viewed by many, including me, as the Gold Standard for a company that reinvented itself in order to meet its business objectives, but whose culture was transformed to be inclusive to all of its employees. Their story is documented in a several articles in the Harvard Business Review.
The IBM story is compelling, and demonstrates how a visionary leader, Lour Gerstner, can lead to systemic cultural change. Over the past 15 years at IBM, as of 2004, change has resulted in a 370% increase of women executives worldwide and a 233% increase in ethnic minority executives. Lou Gerstner’s plan for change focused on four areas: (1) Demonstrate leadership support, (2) Engage employees as partners, (3) Integrate diversity goals with management practices, and (4) Link diversity goals to business goals. When Lou Gerstner became CEO in 1993, he understood that for IBM to be competitive in the future, the company needed to change dramatically. Its worldwide customers were an increasingly diverse group of people, including minorities and women, and he saw that his senior leadership did not reflect the customers or employees. Their plan sought to change IBM’s culture by uncovering and understanding differences among minority groups. IBM established task forces for each of the minority groups including women, with a broad inclusion of employees, but ensuring executive participation. Each task force developed recommendations for making IBM a more inclusive environment. The recommendations were synthesized into an overall plan. A key part of the success was for the executive management to regularly review its diversity charter as a part of its management practices, and to regularly review its workforce pipeline. Although these changes were company wide, IBM always included a focus on its technical talent.
In the six years that I have run the Anita Borg Institute, I’ve had the honor of meeting an unusual number of women technical executives at IBM, which is one of the reasons that I see the change at IBM. I remember the IBM of my youth – men with white shirts and ties, no women in sight – that has changed. The number and percentage of women fellows at IBM is larger than most other companies (many have zero), and includes Fran Allen, who was the first women fellow at IBM, and became the first women to win the Turing award (http://awards.acm.org/homepage.cfm?awd=140), the Nobel Prize of the Computing community. Fran has often talked to me about how helping others are an important part of the IBM culture. She regularly mentors at least five younger scientists she mentors – this practice of mentoring is one of the reasons IBM develops so many women and minority executives. In a discipline where it is still uncommon to see African American engineers, at IBM, I’ve met bright and successful African American executives, such as Mark Dean, the former head of IBM’s Almaden Research lab.
Recommend This If you liked this, let others know:
December 20, 2008
06:32 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Is your high tech company a true "meritocracy"? A meritocracy is defined as a system where ability and achievement is the basis for advancement, rather than connections, status, or power. Most high-tech companies pride themselves on having a culture of meritocracy. Sounds nice, but then why are there virtually no women and minorities at the top of these corporations? Consider the recent UC Davis Census of California Women Business Leaders – 48% of California’s largest companies have NO women executives, and high-tech is worse than other industries. There is a long list of Silicon Valley high tech companies that have 0% women executives and corporate officers. Is this the picture of a meritocracy?
In reality, social science research has shown that even environments that appear to be meritocratic and gender neutral favor the work style and backgrounds of the group already in power. In an environment where women are in a minority such as is the case in most high-tech companies, the majority group of men defines the criteria for success and the ensuing organizational structure tends to rewards them disproportionately. Assuming a meritocracy, one would expect to see women represented across positions of power, pay linked to performance with no relationship to gender and race, and no gender differences in the probability of being hired, promoted, and fired across gender. In reality, research shows that women earn less than their male peers given equal qualifications, are less likely to be offered a position than men are for equal qualifications, and are more likely than men to be passed over for promotions, even in environments that appear to be meritocratic. In this economy, we also need to question who is more likely to then be laid off. Gender bias and stereotyping is alive and well.
Consider the differing views we saw in our major study of 7 high tech companies in Silicon Valley – technical men we interviewed described the promotion structure as "It’s not about gender, it’s about what you have done", "it’s about what you know and what you have done and I haven’t seen political positioning and posturing." Women, however, viewed things differently – consider this statement by a mid-level technical woman: "…back in college I thought gender issues were stupid. I always thought, you just go in do your job, and you will be rewarded for that. Boy was I naïve." Women interviewed described seeing women being passed over for promotions if they didn’t have the right connections or if they had children based on a general perception that they wouldn’t be interested in the job or wouldn’t be willing to relocate since they had children. We also heard countless statements about how technical women aren’t perceived as being as technically competent as their male peers.
How, then, does an organization change this unequal playing field? This calls for a shift in the culture of technology. Rather than assuming there is a meritocracy, organizations that have successfully transformed their culture to become more diverse start by questioning this assumption. First, organizations that know their numbers and take a hard look at their employee hiring, retention and advancement, and dismissal numbers cut by gender can start shedding light on the facts. Are technical women less likely to be hired? Are they less likely to get the promotion, and are they disproportionately more likely to leave the organization given equal qualifications? The most effective executives initiate a transparent conversation about the topic within the organization. Consider IBM’s diversity website, which presents the proportion of women and minorities by year in various positions. Very few companies have that level of openness about their own data. Given the data, executive teams can create metric driven goals for the recruitment, retention, and advancement of technical women.
In next week’s blog, Telle Whitney will describe how IBM went through this transformation – from being a company at risk of losing the war on talent to one globally renowned for gender and ethnic diversity.
Recommend This If you liked this, let others know:
December 11, 2008
07:03 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
From the moment I stepped into my first Computer Science class, with its punch cards, and using a language called COBOL, I was hooked on the possibilities of Computing. School provided the background for my first job programming for the Israeli Army, where the work made a difference in people’s lives. In graduate school we worked with some of the best minds in the world, but they were all men, and yes it was an incredible heady and innovative time, but there was something missing. As a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, I found satisfaction in seeing the designs we created being used to create new products, such as Voice over IP. But there were rarely other women.
Six years ago I moved from high tech to leading the non-profit Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, where we work with industry and academia to recruit, retain and advance technical women. This is the best job in the world!! Within the ABI community you hear how a student took new information from our annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference, and decided to go to graduate school. I see how our work impacts the thinking of the executives we work with, when I hear from them the realization that perhaps their organization isn’t viewed as a meritocracy by all of their employees. I have the chance to see the impact we have on thousands of women who participate in our event, in person or virtually on the web.
But all too often, there are well intentioned leaders who don’t understand the programs that really can have impact on their workforce – to retain and advance all of their top achievers, including the women. Often I talk to people who don’t understand their own subtle biases (yes we all have them, I certainly run smack into mine occasionally).
In this blog, working with Caroline Simard, our research director, it is our plan to provide you with the data – what are the technical women saying, what do they want? We will also provide examples of what works, drawing on the experience of companies who are successful at making changes, and talking to women who are having an impact on their environment. It is critical to the success of the next generation, for true innovation to occur. I believe passionately that an important step is for women to have a seat at the table creating the technology of tomorrow.
Recommend This If you liked this, let others know:
December 4, 2008
06:30 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
In the US and around the world, women are under-represented in technology professions. According to the US Department of Labor, women make up 26% of US computer and math occupations and only 8% of engineering managers in the US. In Silicon Valley, women account for 24% of engineering and computer professionals.
One cause of this under-representation is the low percentage of women graduating from technical disciplines. NSF data show that women represent 22.2% of computer science bachelors graduates, and the proportion of women graduating with bachelor’s degrees in engineering has remained around 20% since 2000. The under-representation of women in technical professions, as an overall proportion, matches the availability of the pipeline.
What cannot be solely attributed to pipeline availability is the drastic drop of representation of women in high level technology positions. In 2008, The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology [ www.anitaborg.org ] , in partnership with the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University [ http://www.stanford.edu/group/gender/ ], conducted a study of technical women in high-tech companies, with 1,795 survey respondents from 7 companies in Silicon Valley. In the study, Climbing the Technical Ladder: Obstacles and Solutions for Mid-Level Women in Technology [www.anitaborg.org/news/research], we looked at which technical positions men and women were occupying – entry, mid, or high level. We found that men are 2.7 times more likely to be in a high-level position than are women, and that women are more likely to be in entry level positions.
Thus women in technical professions are experiencing barriers to advancement that cannot be attributed to the pipeline alone. The fact is that they are not reaching top positions at the same rate as men are. Why? In a now infamous 2005 address, Larry Summers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers , Secretary of the Treasury for President Clinton and then President of Harvard University, set off a firestorm of controversy http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/01/17/summers_remarks_on_women_draw_fire/ by suggesting that this difference in attainment may be based on a masculine superiority in mathematic and technology ability. However, research disagrees. Indeed, girls’ math scores are now as high as boys, as shown by a recent UC Berkeley study, further discrediting the “ability” argument. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/25/education/25math.html
What our research and the research of most gender points to as the biggest causes for the discrepancy in career attainment for technical men and women are societal and organizational factors. Women face greater barriers to entry, retention, and advancement in technology because they defy stereotypes and because they have to operate within a masculine culture where their “fit” is continuously called into question. This blog will discuss the research and the reality of women working in technology positions. Each week, Telle Whitney, the CEO of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, and I will discuss the barriers facing women in technology and the solutions to their advancement. I will discuss the state of research on women in science and technology, what we know about the barriers they face, and what is shown to make a difference in their advancement. I will provide research-based knowledge and recommendations for the companies who wish to retain and advance their female technical talent. Telle Whitney, a technical woman who reached the top of her profession in industry before becoming the CEO of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, will talk from experience and provide concrete examples of how women overcome these barriers. We look forward to your comments and hearing about your experience, whether you are a man or a woman interested in this issue.
Recommend This If you liked this, let others know:
