The Importance of Women in Tech
In a field that strives itself on innovation and the progression of mankind, it severely lacks something that is arguably essential for progress in the workplace. Women. Estimates show that only about 14% of engineers in 2012 were women (Crawford) and that number hasn’t gone up far in recent years. Ever since the industrial revolution, more and more women have been trading in their baking pans for briefcases. Today women make up approximately 47 of the workforce (computerscience.org). But why is the percentage of female tech employees so low compared to the percentage of overall female employees and what can and should we do to change it?
Women such as Grace Hopper and Ada Lovelace have been an essential part of Computer Science and Engineering (Gürer, 2). Today, women at tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Apple participate in making technological advances nearly every day. Companies that shape the modern world wouldn’t exist today without women, yet women have described their working situations at these as “hostile” and “discriminatory”. Nearly two years since CA governor Jerry Brown signed the California Fair Pay Act which was designed to close the wage gap, women in Silicon Valley still report that their multi-billion dollar tech giant employers are still paying them less than their male counterparts for equal work (Larson). The work place sexism at tech companies is what scares young women away from entering tech.
In recent years, tech giants Uber and Google have been in the limelight over work place sexism. In February 2017, former Uber engineer Susan Fowler’s blog post about the sexual harassment she experienced while working at Uber went viral. She reported that her manager sent her a string of harassing messages and HR only gave him “a warning and a stern talking to” because he was “a high performer” and it was only his first offense. After transferring teams, Fowler met other engineers at Uber who have also been sexually harassed by Fowler’s former manager and discovered that HR lied to her when they told her that her experience with her former manager was his first offense (Fowler). Shortly after this post, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick sent a blast email to Uber employees stating that 15.1% of employees in engineering, product management, and scientist roles are women and that he believes “in creating a workplace where a deep sense of justice underpins everything we do” (CNN). Since February 2017, the percentage of Women in tech positions at Uber has gone up .3% (Uber). In August of 2017, Google went under fire when a 10 page, anti-diversity memo now referred to as “the Google memo” written by James Damore the previous month began circling the company. It claimed that men were better employees because women are more “empathizing, agreeable, and neurotic” and suggest Google improve it betters itself by “De-moralizing diversity”(Damore 4–8). Since then Google has fired Damore and was recently sued by 3 female employees over the wage gap (Larson).
As a young woman pursuing a degree in Computer Science, the work place sexism at Tech companies causes me great concern. My first semester at college I took my University’s Intro to Computer Science course in a section with about 60 other students enrolled. Being a 9 am class with non-mandatory attendance, it is no surprise that only around 30 or 40 something students showed up to class regularly (I was one of these students). Several times, I would count the female students who showed up that day and I typically counted 5 or 6 students including myself. The next semester, I went to a seminar sponsored by the organization Lean In when during a power point presentation I learned that less tan 18% of CS students were female. The summer after my first year of college, I worked at SAP as a Software Development Intern. On my first day I went around to the office to meet my fellow team members, I was utterly shocked by how many of them were women (I estimated around 30% of the team was female). I feel fortunate that I was able to have my first internship experience be free of workplace sexism because I know a lot of women in my field aren’t as lucky as I am.
For the tech industry to truly be diverse and progressive as it strives to be, it must abolish it’s sexist culture. Women have proven that they have the potential to do amazing thing in tech, but are held back the culture that scares them away from even entering the field.
Works Cited
CNN. “Read Uber CEO’s staff memo about sexism investiagation.” CNN, 20 Feb 2017, http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/20/technology/uber-travis-kalanick-memo-sexism-investigation/. Accessed 15 Sept 2017.
Damore, James. “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber.” assets.documentcloud.org, July 2017, https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf. Accessed 15 Sept 2017.
“Diversity.” Uber, 2017, https://www.uber.com/diversity/. Accessed 15 Sept 2017
Crawford, Mark. “Engineering Still Needs More Women.” ASME, Sept 2012, https://www.asme.org/career-education/articles/undergraduate-students/engineering-still-needs-more-women. Accessed 15 Sept 2017.
Fowler, Susan. “Reflecting On One Very, Very Strange Year At Uber.” susanjfowler, 19 Feb 2017, https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber. Accessed 15 Sept 2017
Gürer, Denise. “Pioneering Women in Computer Science.” Communications of the ACM, vol. 38, no. 1, 1995, pp. 45–54.
Larson, Erik. “Google Sued for Allegedly Paying Women Less Than Male Peers.” Bloomberg, 14 Sept 2017, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-14/google-sued-by-women-workers-claiming-gender-discrimination. Accessed 15 Sept 2017
“Women in Computer Science.” ComputerScience.org, 2017, http://www.computerscience.org/resources/women-in-computer-science/. Accessed 15 Sept 2017
