Diversity & Inclusion in the Tech Industry

That Time When Women Stopped Coding

1. What occurred during the same time as the beginning of the decline of women in computer science?

The share of women in computer science started falling at roughly the same moment when personal computers started showing up in U.S. homes in significant numbers. These early personal computers weren’t much more than toys. You could play pong or simple shooting games, maybe do some word processing. And these toys were marketed almost entirely to men and boys. This idea that computers are for boys became a narrative.

2. Why does it matter that males had been playing on computers growing up?

As personal computers became more common, computer science professors increasingly assumed that their students had grown up playing with computers at home. Male classmates were way ahead of females because they’d grown up playing with computers.

Why diversity matters to your tech company

1. When are diversity efforts most successful?

Diversity efforts are most successful when they’re driven by a commitment from company leaders. And meaningful commitment requires leaders to understand why diversity matters.

2. Why do diverse companies perform better?

• Diversity offers significant benefits for teams focused on creativity and innovation. According to Scott E. Page, professor of complex systems, political science and economics at the University of Michigan: “Diverse groups of people bring to organizations more and different ways of seeing a problem and, thus, faster/better ways of solving it.”
• When the employees of an organization better represent their users and desired users, they will build more effectively for those groups.
• By failing to involve particular communities in the process of creating of new technology, we as a society lose out on the benefits of those community members’ ideas.

3. Give an example of how a diverse company can serve a diverse user base or vise-versa.

Globally there are a billion people right now who are just starting to use the internet. They face a plethora of challenges as they’re getting started (e.g. cost, connectivity, digital literacy and actual literacy to start). Involving a diverse team that may directly relate or understand some of the challenges that these users face gives us insight into more innovative solutions, and ways to make products accessible to these users.

For example, English is the most dominant language on the web, but on a global level it’s not that widely spoken or understood. Having a team that understands the value of graphical cues, or translations, as well as structuring the language of the site for translating (e.g. simple basic English and avoiding jargon) gives the company access to a more diverse user base.

Allowing for solutions for a more diverse base means more people can access products which in turn drives profits for companies.