Advocates Unlock the Clubhouse at Google
Google last night hosted another Anita Borg Women in Technology meet and greet with authors Jane Margolis of UCLA and Allan Fisher of iCarnegie Inc. They were on campus to talk about their study Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing describing the trials and tribulations of women in academic computing. This discussion dovetailed quite nicely with an article I wrote last year for the San Francisco Chronicle Paving the Way for ‘Systers’, which explored the declining numbers of women in technology, especially at the managerial level, so I was quite intrigued.
Karl Schoenberger of the Mercury News SF Bureau and I three months ago had a conversaton on Tech Outsourcing and the Dwindling CS Major in Lynne's Take on Tech. My view as expressed was that the impact of outsourcing, the loss of tech jobs, and parents refusal to pay for science degrees is interconnected. And, as I noted in my Lynne's Take on Tech observations of Google, Tech, and Dinner a few days prior to my talk with Karl, the Systers were quite optimistic in their enthusiasm for more jobs for women in computing, stating at that time "Despite the doom and gloom headlines about outsourcing, prospects for meaningful jobs in these fields is bright." Is it still as bright?
The number of women in computing rose from 7% in 1988 to 40% prior to the dotcom bubble burst, according to the authors of this study. Now it's at 30%. So naturally one of the key items discussed was the impact on women studying computing in a "maturing" market. Now, no woman wants to be told she's starting to look mature, but in an age of offshoring and downsizing and nonstrategic products, the reality now is that technology companies are not as upwardly mobile and inviting as they once were. So how is it possible to level the playing field when the team has shrunk?
Probably the hardest thing to deal with is "expectations". The authors noted that many women left the major, even if they did well, because they did not feel it came naturally - "not born to it" in their words. Of course, the same was true for physics, medicine, and other scientific areas, and I don't see a lot of excuses like that from women. Mainly in those areas we opine about pay equity and job security, interesting and meaningful work, and the difficulty of staying on the fast track and taking care of our families. So I find this claim a bit hollow.
I want to contrast this with the issues that impacted middle school girls when I taught Girls Just Want to Have Astro Fun at the AAUW Stanford Tech Trek. Like in CS, girls don't have a lot of experience with equipment - in this case, astronomical equipment. Instead of getting all theoretical and letting them be timid, I brought my nine-year-old daughter Rebecca and her SCT Celestron C-5 telescope to demonstrate that girls can 1) own, 2) handle, and 3) enjoy equipment. What a difference it made to these 13-14 year old girls to see a girl younger then them expertly handle an expensive instrument. Not only that - they also got to handle it too! I didn't hear anything about being born to it, not because they might think that, but because it was so clearly proven to be just an excuse. And perhaps that is what's wrong with young women in CS today - they've been led to believe they can make an excuse and bow out instead of fighting for the real issues: academic respect, fairness and consideration in pay and project opportunities, and family fairness. All these are the same as women in industry need to survive. If they don't get it, is it any surprise they leave?
Maybe this excuse of naturalness is really an easy way to opt out of what has become an unglamorous major, an unwelcoming industry, and an unimaginative age. Meaning in work is absolutely critical to happiness and well-being in life. So maybe in an industry of downsizing, outsourcing, and pessimism, doing the hard work to commit yourself to a major that no one respects is really an "unnatural act".