“’Female Technologist’. ‘Woman in Computer Science’. ‘Girl Coder’. What do these phrases even mean? When was the last time you heard ‘Male Technologist’? Does that even exist?”
At the 2019 Grace Hopper Convention in Dublin, hosted by AnitaB.org, this statement was a part of the opening address by Brenda Darden Wilkerson, CEO of AnitaB.org. This conference, the first Grace Hopper Convention to be held outside of the United States, has the ambitious aim of bringing women together, across all divides and borders, “to build relationships, learn, and advance their careers.” The first Grace Hopper convention was held 25 years ago, in Washington DC. The convention was founded with a key goal in mind – for women to help other women to progress in an industry in which they weren’t always offered a fair seat at the table.
If one demographic is the key driver behind anything – technology, politics, legislation – how are the minorities impacted? Does male domination disadvantage others? Are we just being a bit moany? Potentially… but potentially not. A few key examples of the tangible problems associated with employment equity have stood out in my mind from the conference.
Facial recognition technology data sets are 75% male and 80% white. That means if you are a white male using facial recognition technology the failure rate is about 0.8%. For African-American females the failure rate is 34.7% (Lohr, 2018). This is a stark reflection that technology today is being made fit for only some of its users. In 2015, in the US 25% of developers were female. Of these 25%, only 5% were Asian and only 3% were African American (Grace Hopper Celebration, 2019). These developers are, by definition, the minority, and therefore do not have the resources to make products for their likeness. Imagine how far these types of technology would have progressed if the norm was to have a diverse and varied workforce behind them.
If you’re unconvinced – perhaps faulty facial recognition technology doesn’t seem like too heavy of a cross to bear to you – this is not an isolated incident! Last year, Amazon created a super-slick AI tool to speed up the time spent on scanning through the mountains of CVs they receive (Dastin, 2018). This was regarded as a great revolution! Give the machine 100 CVs and it will spit out the top 5 in seconds. No more labouring over the pages and pages of applicant’s self-proclamations of being “team players” and “self-starters”. This was hailed as the new holy grail, until, of course, it emerged that Amazon’s algorithm did not want to hire women. CVs that featured “women’s chess club” or attended an all-women college had their CVs marked down. I must admit, I have some admiration for Amazon admitting this faux pas, as after all, they could have gotten away with it! The technology has since been scrapped (Dastin, 2018).
Technology is no longer a niche segment so why are we leaving one niche responsible for creating it. We cannot expect a single demographic to make technology that works for the majority. In Silicon Valley, completely-useless and destined-to-fail juicing machine start-ups can raise €100 million (Kolodny, 2017) in funding from investors but breast-pump start-ups (the most inconvenient and infamously uncomfortable piece of technology in the world) fail to launch or attract the same interest from investors (Shu, 2019).
Anita Borg, the woman who the AnitaB.org Foundation was named after, was a technologist from Chicago, Illinois. She is regarded as one of the most pivotal modern-day women in the industry, having received a huge number of accolades for her important work in technology and advancing women in the field (AnitaB.org, 2019). In 1995 she posed a challenge to a crowd of Computer Scientists. She challenged them to aim to have 50/50 gender split in their technical workforce by 2020. The 50/50 by 2020 problem (which has spectacularly failed as we are 300 days from 2020) is one that continues to baffle the speakers at the Grace Hopper Celebration. “We are engineers. We solve problems for a living! Why is this problem causing us so much trouble to solve?” In 1995, when Borg posed this challenge the global technical workforce was 25% female. Today, it stands around 19 – 20%.
A lot has changed in Computer Science since 1995 at the launch of the first Grace Hopper Celebration. MS-DOS was Window’s biggest product (DOS.OS, 2019). Google co-founders, Brin and Page, hadn’t even met each other (Mejia, 2018). Java, JavaScript and PHP were just being launched into the world of programmers (Veracode, 2019). But one thing hasn’t changed. We are still talking about “Women in Computer Science” and “Female Technologists”. Even at the Dublin Grace Hopper event, a conversation was started as to whether we should even have such events promoting “Women in Tech”. Surely, by labelling an event “Women in Tech” we are leaving out and alienating 49% of the population. We need to find a way to bring both sides of the population along on the journey to solve this problem, and perhaps women centred events are, conversely, only distancing the gap.
The employment gap in the world of Computer Science and Information Systems is a border. Women are less likely to pursue and stay in a technical career. This is a pipeline problem (women do not pursue STEM courses at 3rd level), a recruiting problem (employers are more likely to hire from male-dominated spaces – our trusty Amazon AI tool didn’t fall too far from the tree!) and a retention problem (women are more likely to be made feel uncomfortable and unhappy in a technical work environment) (Grace Hopper Celebration, 2019). These three problems are the building blocks for the employment gap border.
This border is one that technologists of all backgrounds agree need to be removed. From an ethical stance, a business case point of view and an innovation perspective – it is a win-win-win if we are able to open up this border and allow the metaphorical and physical free flow of talented minorities!
A thought from the conference that really stood out in my mind, is that symbolically breaking down this border is not enough. Having “women in tech” networking events, having female MDs of Microsoft Ireland and Google Ireland, having “Coding Clubs” for girls are symbolic steps in the right direction. But all they are is a symbol. We need to address this complex problem from the root up, and vitally we need to get the support of 100% of the population, as 51% has clearly not been enough to date.
AnitaB.org. (2019). About Anita Borg, Co-Founder of GHC | AnitaB.org. [online] Available at: https://anitab.org/about-us/about-anita-borg/ [Accessed 1 Mar. 2019].
Dastin, J. (2018). Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women. [online] Reuters. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight/amazon-scraps-secret-airecruiting-tool-that-showed-bias-against-women-idUSKCN1MK08G [Accessed 1 Mar. 2019].
DOS.OS. (2019). Timeline of DOS operating systems. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_DOS_operating_systems [Accessed 1 Mar. 2019].
Grace Hopper Celebration. (2019), AnitaB.Org, Microsoft Ireland. [27 Feb 2019]
Kolodny, L. (2017). The tech start-up that made a $700 juicing machine has shut down. [online] CNBC. Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/01/the-tech-start-up-that-made-a-700-juicing-machine-has-shut-down.html [Accessed 1 Mar. 2019].
Lohr, S. (2018). Facial Recognition Is Accurate, if You’re a White Guy. [online] NY Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/09/technology/facial-recognition-race-artificial-intelligence.html [Accessed 1 Mar. 2019].
Mejia, Z. (2018). 8 surprising facts you might not know about Google’s early days. [online] CNBC. Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/04/8-surprising-facts-you-might-not-know-about-googles-early-days.html [Accessed 1 Mar. 2019].
Shu, C. (2019). Naya Health, once a promising breast pump startup, now leaving customers in the dark. [online] TechCrunch. Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/23/naya-health-once-a-promising-breast-pump-startup-now-leaving-customers-in-the-dark/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer_us=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_cs=yEzlxXGoLe0jHoiPm0G_nA [Accessed 1 Mar. 2019].
Veracode. (2019). The History of Programming Languages Infographic. [online] Available at: https://www.veracode.com/blog/2013/04/the-history-of-programming-languages-infographic [Accessed 1 Mar. 2019].
Beyond The Border 
Way to go – and nice to see my colleague and ffriend, Paula Roberts with you too.
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