The Technology Industry: How Widespread Male Dominance has Led to the Alienation of Women.
From the computer science classroom to Silicon Valley, women face misogyny in the workplace. This is highlighted by the fact that the most well-known people in the tech industry are men. When you think of famous people in tech, you likely think of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft, or Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook. You don’t however often think of Susan Wojcicki, CEO of Youtube, Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM, or Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo. Why is it that women represent fifty-nine percent of the workforce yet women make up around ten to thirty percent of the workers at well-known tech companies? Often women leave the tech industry at a forty-five percent higher rate than their male counterparts. There are many reasons including a lack of female role models, the overall culture surrounding the industry, and limited advancement opportunities that cause this.
So how did the tech industry become so male-dominated in the first place? Well, to begin with, the tech industry was originally seen as “women’s work” because it was seen as being secretarial. Women were some of the first computer programmers ever: often being referred to as “calculators” themselves. During World War II, women took advantage of the newly emerging technical opportunities, even contributing immensely to the Manhattan Project. The tech industry was seen as a great field for women, providing high paying jobs starting at twenty thousand dollars a year, the equivalent of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars today. By the mid-1960s, men also in search of high-paying jobs, began to push women out of the field. This is shown in Cannon and Perry’s research which was very influential during this period. Of the 1,378 programmers surveyed, 187 of which were women; The study found that programmers “did not like people.” Though there is no actual evidence to suggest that “anti-social” people are in any way better with computers, this was imputed into hiring practices leading to more men being hired, and stereotypes such as “neckbeards” forming. As Emily Cheng, author of Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley said: “ If you set out to hire antisocial nerds, you’ll wind up hiring a lot more men than women”.
In 1984, women’s enrollment in computer science programs peaked at thirty-seven percent; whereas today women occupy around seventeen percent enrollment. In the next few years, the dot com boom further increased interest in computing. Men began to take more of the coveted computer science spots leading to a dramatic drop in opportunities for women over the following years. Today technology and computer-related fields are some of the fastest growing industries, yet still few women pursue them. Problems surrounding the industry reflect in the classroom as well, women often feel alienated as if they can’t “speak the language” of the male exclusivity. I experienced this myself taking an emerging technology class. I enjoyed the class and made good friends, but when I first entered I felt incredibly intimidated. This intimidation I feel is a reason that people don’t continue pursuing these types of classes. In Duke University’s computer science 201 class, women make up about 36 percent of the class, yet that number drops to about 27 percent in CompSci 230. This is also often due to lack of confidence especially for women who have little programming experience beforehand. They feel that they are underqualified. Lack of role models is also a problem for women in computer science but this is changing. For example, at Duke University, female computer science teachers have grown by 20 percent.
The culture of the technology industry is also why women leave the industry. From “booth babes” at technology conferences such as CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, to female speakers not being taken seriously by investors. Women typically garner around two percent of the available money. This statistic is not surprising considering that only seven percent of investors are women. These issues are not the only problematic aspects of these tech conferences. Women also constantly have to worry about covering up their glasses at after parties with some even becoming “breeding grounds for sexual harassment and assault”. In 2018, CES, one of the largest electronic shows in the country, had their conference with no female keynote speakers and no code of conduct. Outside of conferences as well, women face bias in the tech industry’s most major players. Tracy Chou was working at a start-up company where the co-founder would often brag about how the new men hired would perform better than her in front of her. Chou noticed a major flaw in the company’s code, pointing it out to her engineering team. She immediately was dismissed but she continued, even demonstrating the conditions that triggered the bug. Shortly after, a male coworker saw she was right and again brought it to attention where it was taken seriously. She was seen as “emotional” when she raised concerns whereas when the male co-worker did he is seen as assertive.
The last common reason women often leave technology is a lack of advancement opportunities. According to the 2017 Women in technology survey, forty-three percent of women polled said that a lack of advancement opportunities was one of the biggest challenges of working in IT versus twenty-six percent of men polled. Women only account for around eleven percent of executive positions in Silicon Valley, and women lose female colleagues more and more as they climb the ladder. Lack of career trajectory was also cited by twenty-eight percent of women as their reason that caused them to quit. The idea of a lack of advancement opportunity has been a prevalent issue facing the small group of women in the industry for a long time now. This is a prime example of how problems in the Tech industry are not new. Though the industry is and doesn’t have the long history of sexism of fields such as law, it still faces problems. The Tech industry is often seen as advanced and the future yet it still faces the problems of diversity as much older industries.
The Technology Industry: How Widespread Male Dominance has Led to the Alienation of Women.
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