The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Despite national conversations about gender diversity in tech, women are still underrepresented, underpaid, discriminated against, and then told that the problem is them.
BY TYNA HOPE, PHD
I work in tech, at least I do when I am working. I am an engineer by training, but I’m focused on data and AI and their applications. I was recently reminded that I have been an engineer for a long, long time. I received my professional designation (P. Eng.) in 1994, having completed my Bachelor’s degree in 1991. I have seen lots of technology changes in my career.
Over the last 7 years or so, there has been an explosion in the use of AI to solve business problems, both in commercial applications and in-house corporate solution creation. Contrary to what millennials would have you believe, AI isn’t new. It has actually been around since the 1950’s. What is new is our ability to solve every day corporate, research, and social problems (mostly due to the vast quantities of data and cloud computing power).
This hot technology naturally leads to a new set of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) professionals eager to make a good living in this exploding space. Data Scientists, Data Engineers, and AI Product Managers are few of the hottest related professions right now.
In light of that, I recently attended a “Women in AI” event billed as “strategies for women to succeed in the AI industry during times of layoffs”. Honestly, I didn’t really want to go, but I had just been laid off and was curious.
I heard exactly what I was afraid of hearing. “Women need to create more networks”, “get a mentor to show you how to succeed”, and my personal favourite, “ask your male friends how they got ahead.”
The entire 3-hour event was squarely focused on what women needed to do differently to better their skill sets and relationships among themselves. The message was that we are not good enough and need to be fixed. In my opinion, this was a waste of time for me, and likely others in the room. I’m not sure that many of the young women had the life experience to realize it.
If we really want to help women gain a foothold in these emerging STEM professions, I think we need to lay some hard truths bare. We have been having these same types of conversations for a very long time and they do not help. The “Women in AI” event reminded me of when I was early in my engineering career and I would attend the engineering profession’s “Women in Engineering Society” events. These events, 30 years ago, had the same type of activities and focus. To my knowledge, the society not only did not help the women at work, but it died out due to a lack of attendance.
It’s hard to make yourself go to an event when childcare is difficult to obtain and the benefits of making the effort to go are opaque.
“The entire 3-hour event was squarely focused on what women needed to do differently to better their skill sets and relationships among themselves. The message was that we are not good enough and need to be fixed.”
The event that I attended was attempting to address the leaky pipeline that occurs in women in STEM careers. But, in my experience, the leaky pipeline comes from many sources. We live in a culture that tells girls that they are not smart enough for math, and the hyper-masculinization of tech creates a barrier to entry. These ideas are also seeds to imposter syndrome, which is so pervasive. But even when girls make it through the education system and land a tech job, we lose women at a rate greater than men. Why?
Because the culture sucks for women.
Many of you have no doubt heard of the Google developer that ran amok with his anti-diversity manifesto which repeated his opinion on gender and women’s innate inability to succeed in tech. Understand that he is just an engineer, not a behavioural or anthropological researcher with anything other than a lay-male opinion. We also hear stories of egregiously sexist behaviour in gaming organizations in particular. We like to think that these are one-of problems, specific to a particular organization or sector, but in my opinion that’s just not true.
Here are some of my observations about why we are not making gains in tech:
Men are rewarded for their worst behaviour and women are penalized no matter what their behaviour.
Male data scientists can show up at internal meetings late and talk over others. They can arrive at customer meetings in a hoodie and tell customers that they don’t know what they’re doing, and that’s totally okay.
The range of acceptable behaviour for women is stricter and often we are penalized for doing what should be okay in other settings, such as asking for what has been promised to us (money) or simply looking out for ourselves when people are uncivil. Actions that are applauded when performed by men are seen as crass, abrasive, and simply unacceptable when performed by women.
The culture assumes that someone else is looking after family.
Long hours and a belief that creating a family at work through gaming, social events, and free lunches will replace the time you don’t get to spend not working. This scenario works for a young man (especially a socially underdeveloped one), but for a woman this is not ideal. Even if you are a young woman with no kids, try not paying attention to your family of origin. I dare you.
The sexism and misogyny are pervasive.
I experienced this coming from developers, data scientists, and managers all the way up to C level. I once transferred within a company (at a principal level) to report to a newly hired director who thought the best use of my time was to job shadow him. He was illustrating tasks to me I had been doing for years. I reported the behaviour, hoping for change, but in the end the best thing I felt that I could do was leave the company. And even if a women doesn’t feel it’s bad enough to leave, when it’s time for lay-offs (and they always happen), women are hit the worst.
I know these observations are depressing, but I’m sharing them to highlight a point: there was nothing wrong with the skills of the women in the organizations that I worked for. The environment was such that there was no winning for them.
So, what can we do?
There are changes that I think women can make that would be more effective than what I often see proposed. How about a Women in Tech group that creates a sisterhood? How about we talk about appropriate boundaries and how we will stick together and help each other out when the boundaries are crossed?
It doesn’t help that the female HR and C-level participants are allied to the managers at the top that are enabling the bad culture; a common practice in ruling groups is to keep the ruled class separated, focused on themselves, or to see each other as rivals. How can we create solidarity that isn’t inwardly focused (to correct our never-ending list of imperfections), but outwardly focused to address the systemic, cultural problem?
Bottom line: we need to stop accepting the message that it’s us and not them. Because the reality is, we are pretty great exactly as we are. DEFY
Tyna Hope
Tyna holds a PhD in electrical engineer and has 25 years of experience working in the tech industry and research settings.