More gender diversity in tech: what's the solution?

I’m also really interested in ethics and social matters in tech: (gender) diversity, reasonable and fair use of innovation, social inclusion, and green IT. I read and heard a lot about the issues and the solutions for women diversity in IT, and wanted to summarize these ideas here and analyze what could be the go-to solution to solve the lack of balance between men* and women* in STEM.

For brevity, I’ll use the terms “man/men”, “boy(s)”, “girl(s)” and “woman/women” to refer as what most people would use to define their peers, my goal was not to make people who don’t fit in these categories invisible. I still think people are treated based on their perceived gender.

Gender diversity: why are we “forcing” women into IT

Let’s first think about why it’s important to make sure women are more present in the tech field than it’s currently the case. Unfortunately, I often read opinions that the campaigns for diverse-IT want to “force” women where they don’t belong or don’t want to be. Well, situation surely isn’t that simple.

First, there are still tons of clichés stating that girls and women are better at literature and care than math or engineering. This starts really early, when teachers would let most girls feel like they’re naturally bad at math, because of biological reasons.

Those stereotypes are so integrated in our society that it’s difficult for most women to choose a career in engineering and that parents would often prevent their daughters from choosing hard science paths (may it be conscious or unconscious).

From a social point of view, preventing women from entering the IT field is keeping them away from a stable career with lots of opportunities to grow and take responsibilities, from higher salaries, from rewarding jobs… Women are way more likely to suffer poverty than men, because they’re more likely to have part-time, low-pay or temporary jobs. It’s high time jobs get distributed in a fairer way amongst the work force.

In any field, IT is becoming more and more important and we can hardly imagine a job where computers aren’t used at all apart from craftsmanship jobs (even there, tech can be present). It means everyone with even ground knowledge in IT is better prepared for the (near!) future than others. It means even more inequalities between men and women coming soon if we keep women away from STEM.

I could also add that, as a woman, I feel like I should have the right to be represented fairly in all places where decisions are made. Because IT tools are so important in our daily, professional and personal, life, people conceiving them should represent fairly the population that will use them. And hey, women are about half the population…

So, what’s the solution against gender inequality in IT?

There is not one simple magic answer to solve the problem. There are a lot of actions out there, some with great impact, some with little impact, some just a quick fix to a deeper problems that people refuse to tackle… Mixing them all together, doing, analyzing and improving will allow everyone to move forward.

One thing is for sure: if we do nothing, equity could only be reached after many decades, or maybe even centuries…

Role Models: inspiring by example

Women are underrepresented in a lot of fields. We don’t even notice that they’re only a small part of main characters in the media (except for girly movies, which narrow the roles of girls and women a lot…).

As subjects of stories, women only appear in a quarter of television, radio, and print news. In a 2015 report, women made up a mere 19% of experts featured in news stories and 37% of reporters telling stories globally. As behavioral scientists studying women’s under-representation in the workplace, we know that this gender-imbalanced picture of society can reinforce and perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes.

Harvard Business Review, Tackling the Underrepresentation of Women in Media

For girls and women to be able to imagine themselves as managers, techies, presidents, entrepreneurs… they need to think it’s doable. In order to be able to imagine it, they need to see other women succeed in those fields. As IT positions are almost always filled by men, it’s easy to understand that girls and women can’t imagine themselves filling those same positions.

That’s the motivation behind the whole “Women in IT role models” campaigns. But role models have to be well chosen in order for the strategy to pay off.

As Isabelle Collet, IT scientist and researcher, author of the book “Les oubliées du numériques” (that could roughly be translated by “The forgotten females of IT”), points out regularly, unreachable models could have a negative impact.

Isabelle is promoting the “role-models” strategy of course: her book is about the women who made the tech world but we hardly heard about! But there’s a negative effect in those campaigns if we only show the women who had an amazing career, were born gifted, became superstars, received the Nobel price…

Girls and women have to be able to compare their situation with the role models’ one, otherwise they could think they’re unattainable. Status quo.

So what’s working? Well, every woman working in STEM should advocate for women in tech, and share their successes, journey, including the difficulties they had to and managed to overcome. Either they’re a junior developer to an IT manager.

Many women would tend to see this as bragging, or be ashamed to showcase their work because they feel it’s not good enough. You don’t have to be perfect or achieve incredible things to matter! Accept to be imperfect, in the making (like any single human on Earth, whatever their gender), and talk about your achievements, even if they seem insignificant.

Quotas: make room for women

Quotas is probably to most debated question in equity matter! Most people in place refute the fact that they are privileged because of their gender, ethnicity and family background, then see quotas as unfair to them and their peers.

This is denying that some groups of people are underprivileged and that not belonging to the dominating group makes everything harder. This is also denying that a fair society would distribute opportunities amongst all groups, and allow everyone to be represented equally.

If you truly think that you deserved what you have only thanks to what you achieved, your competences and your efforts, quotas shouldn’t scare you at all.

Women are as capable as men if they are given equal opportunities from the start (which is not the case currently), so there’s no reason to accept a situation where they’re kept apart from most decision making and innovation fields.

Also, because there are so many open jobs in tech, there is definitely room for everyone interested and motivated!

Interest girls in STEM

Even though that’s not the only problem (many studies have shown that women have more degrees than men but get fewer good positions, and that a lot of women quit their jobs in “manly” sectors because of harassment, sexism, glass ceiling, unfair opportunities…), having more girls studying STEM is really important.

Interesting girls in technologies, IT, hard sciences… today would only start to solve the problem in minimum 15 years. And that would be in a perfect world were parents and teachers are able to drop their stereotypes right now and all girls are allowed to pursue the path that appeals to them. It’s must, but it won’t solve the issue alone.

Give opportunities to diverse profiles

Education is not only for kids, teens and young adults. Women (everyone in fact) can attend adulthood training to make a career shift. It can be a Bachelor or Master degree (day or night courses), or another kind of training.

The advantage of short-term trainings is that trainees are taught the newest technologies and trained to be job-ready with a lot of hands-on practice.

But then comes another issue: employers have to accept those new profiles and see the benefits of hiring people who had another career before tech. Aiming only for high degrees profiles to fulfill developers positions might be a bit outdated and not coherent with the actual market needs…

If employers manage to shift their point of view and put a priority on soft skills, hands-on experience and know-how instead of degrees, it allows for the underprivileged ones to get better opportunities.

Access to higher education is a privilege and that having a degree are privileges.

I’m not saying degrees aren’t worth anything, just saying the piece of paper doesn’t make the person, and that not everyone with the potential and capabilities was offered the opportunity to get into higher education.

The strategies I personally don’t like…

There are campaign about diversity and inclusion that are often mentioned but don’t convince me at all.

“There is more than software development in the Tech world”: selling side-jobs to women

Another way of interesting women in IT is to point that technical jobs are not the only ones in the sector. Some positions can require as much computer knowledge as any other white collar job. The shortcut that some people take here is that, “hey, ladies, you might not be at ease with machines, but it’s ok, even in IT there’s paperwork to do“. At least, that’s how I understand it.

Of course, there are management and high-level positions in Tech that don’t require programming or hardware knowledge. Some IT managers only have management background but not IT. Same for techpreneurs who have the ideas but hire people to produce the solution they imagined.

I still see these campaigns as a way of keeping women away from technical jobs, implying once again that women are less fitted for those positions. So creating a segregation inside the tech world, with tech jobs on one side and administrative ones on the other sites.

Concretely, on one side the jobs that are considered more technical, scientific, more worthy, with lots of evolution opportunities, and on the other side, the support jobs. At the same time, companies that feel obliged to hire women to reach the quotas, will see this as a great opportunity: they can hire women for a tech department but still keep them in administrative positions.

Of course, not every woman on Earth has to be interested in STEM, that will never be the case and it’s not the goal (just has not every man on Earth is somehow a techie or a geek). But if we seek diversity in order for everyone to be represented in the design and conception of IT tools, women have to be present at all levels, in all kind of jobs.

Good to have more women in your IT department, but if you pin them in a corner to take notes and watch the others DO, then it’s pointless. Women have to be allowed to take part in the production process, including taking action as a DOer, switching from passive to active participation.

Deconstructing the geek cliché or painting IT in pink?

There’s another trend in DEI campaigns where we tell women that software engineers are not all geeks, with the usual clichés linked to it. Those campaigns consider that women are reluctant to working in IT because of the perceived atmosphere in this kind of environment.

Painting the picture of IT jobs in pink: I personally don’t want women to invest in a career to turn back months or years later because they were deceived (imagine how the media could use those figures to prove that women don’t belong…).

It’s true that working in IT doesn’t mean having a desk in the basement and working with people who can only about Dungeons & Dragons all day (well, maybe it does in some place, I haven’t been there). But you still have to make it clear that working in IT nowadays means working with many men, and that men don’t socialize the same as women.

Let’s face it, there are more chances to encounter video game fans in a tech environment than in any other. It doesn’t mean those people cannot talk about something else, but they will. It’s important to realize that working with men often means different dynamics and different topics. We shouldn’t try to hide this reality, but prepare women for it instead!

Also, what message are these campaigns sending to the geek girls and women? Well, it’s somehow telling them that being a geek is bad. Because we try to clean the image of the IT people by denying their interests and their culture, we’re saying that what they are and what they like is unworthy or shameful. Being a geek as a woman is socially less accepted than as a man, so let’s not add to it!

All in all, we need campaigns for women that don’t attract only geeks OR only girly-girls.

Main illustration picture: Pixabay