Knocking at the door of tech’s boys’ club

By 2011, women received just 18 per cent of computer science bachelor’s degrees in the United States, down from 37 per cent in 1984

Knocking at the door of tech’s boys’ club

By Jennifer Saba

NEW YORK (Reuters Breakingviews) - Computer science once welcomed women with more or less open arms. Yet a confluence of forces pushed females to the sidelines just as technology began to transform corporate America and profoundly influence society. Thinking differently, suggests Emily Chang in her book Brotopia, might get more women back into the field, and pay dividends for the tech industry.

The most salacious part in Chang’s book, excerpted in Vanity Fair, has already ricocheted around social media. Yet chapter six, which describes drug-fueled sex parties and cuddle puddles thrown by powerful men of Silicon Valley, is mostly an outlier.

The rest of Brotopia is wonky by comparison, layered with statistics and interviews that nicely stitch together the rise and fall of women in technology. It’s refreshing for instance to be reminded that Ada Lovelace, a woman, is credited with writing the first program in the 1840s for a yet-to-be-invented computer. She didn’t have to compete with a 20-something dude in a hoodie.

It also retells stories that have been well-covered elsewhere. Former Google engineer James Damore’s memo on gender makes an appearance as does Susan Fowler, whose blog post on Uber’s toxic culture pulled a thread that is still unraveling the ride-hailing app. The rehashes are forgivable considering that females hold only a quarter of computing jobs in the United States.

That wasn’t always the case. Women played key roles in the industry’s early years, especially in writing software. Grace Hopper was one of the first to program the computer at Harvard University integral in the development of the atomic bomb. Cosmopolitan editor-in-chief Helen Gurley Brown encouraged women to join the sector because of its lucrative paychecks.

But as computing transformed so did women’s role in it. Men muscled in once salaries climbed and the work was no longer considered clerical. Companies started to rely on aptitude tests to fill positions. In the 1960s, psychologists William Cannon and Dallis Perry helped shaped the stereotype that the best programmers were antisocial nerds and bearded nonconformists, and schools and recruiters ran with that notion.

University computer science departments accepted students who were already programming-proficient, handing the advantage to boys used to playing video games. By 2011, women received just 18 per cent of computer science bachelor’s degrees in the United States, down from 37 per cent in 1984.

Shining a spotlight on gender inequality is a start; the thornier issue is finding solutions. A lack of women engineering students is part of the problem. But so too is the mindset pervasive in Silicon Valley startups that only a select group of universities and specific degrees provide the best candidates. It’s also hard to get more women in the tech workforce when female-led companies received only two per cent of venture funding, as they did in 2016, according to Chang.

There’s a good case that shows gender can help a company flourish. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin recognized the talents of three women in the early days. Susan Wojcicki provided their fledging business a garage and helped develop its powerful ad platform. Marissa Mayer wrote the algorithms connecting search and advertising. Sheryl Sandberg sold it to Madison Avenue as vice president of global online sales and operations. Only Mayer has a computer science background.

“Early Google had proven that diversity in the workplace needn’t be based on altruism or some goal of social engineering,” Chang wrote. “It was simply good business.”

Now Google is one of the world’s most valuable companies worth more than US$700 billion. Women make up just 31 per cent of Google’s workforce, compared with 47 per cent for the American economy at large. As the money poured in, so did the men.

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