For almost all of my professional life I have been very passionate about this topic. I am on the Anita Borg Institute mailing list. I read various posts addressing this where they talk about why girls need more encouragement to get involved in CS from an early age and how gender stereotyping in schools is hurting their chances. Programs like http://www.girlstart.org/ conduct camps and special events to encourage girls in STEM subjects, that I enthusiastically support. I got extremely worked up over this post (http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/28/women-in-tech-stop-blaming-me/). Two years later it still makes me angry.
There's no disputing the fact is that there are relatively very few women in this field, both entrepreneurs and working in the industry. There's also no disputing a facts like the last ten years of ACM programming champion teams are all men. Sure, there are stellar examples like Marissa Mayer, but what about all these women here who want to break into this industry and feel overwhelmed by the male majority? Are they all being oppressed somehow? If given the right opportunity and encouragement can they change these numbers?
Recently, 30 seconds on a Google Hangout session gave me a new perspective. It was during office hours set by professors of a Game Theory online course that I took via Coursera. They hosted a hangout where students of the course from all over the world could log in and ask them questions. About half way in, this woman from Iran came on the screen. She was wearing her Niqab (head scarf), it had some netting in the front from which she could be heard. Nothing particularly interesting happened, she just introduced herself as a master's student wanting to come to America for her graduate degree and asked her question and the hangout moved on..But seeing her like that changed something within me. I started thinking that maybe women in western countries complain about gender equality issues too easily. We grew up in privileged households, got the opportunity to study wherever we wanted and chose a career that we liked. Not that this particular woman wasn't like that too, she probably wears the scarf for religious reasons and not because she was forced to. But I started thinking about gender inequality that affect women's chances of even getting a decent education. They might want to study but their family forces them to marry young and stay at home, This still happens in India, Pakistan and other middle eastern countries. They might not even get to finish high school. Maybe they have internet access and they see this free course and decide to take it. Maybe they study in secret anyway. These are real challenges that they face and me saying that 'I find it challenging to be a working mom in a male dominated industry' seems very petty. Rather than complaining or being offended when someone is being sexist, I want to think of such women. They should inspire us to try harder and push ourselves towards where we want to go. Whatever we are struggling about, we should dedicate our efforts to these women.
There's no disputing the fact is that there are relatively very few women in this field, both entrepreneurs and working in the industry. There's also no disputing a facts like the last ten years of ACM programming champion teams are all men. Sure, there are stellar examples like Marissa Mayer, but what about all these women here who want to break into this industry and feel overwhelmed by the male majority? Are they all being oppressed somehow? If given the right opportunity and encouragement can they change these numbers?
Recently, 30 seconds on a Google Hangout session gave me a new perspective. It was during office hours set by professors of a Game Theory online course that I took via Coursera. They hosted a hangout where students of the course from all over the world could log in and ask them questions. About half way in, this woman from Iran came on the screen. She was wearing her Niqab (head scarf), it had some netting in the front from which she could be heard. Nothing particularly interesting happened, she just introduced herself as a master's student wanting to come to America for her graduate degree and asked her question and the hangout moved on..But seeing her like that changed something within me. I started thinking that maybe women in western countries complain about gender equality issues too easily. We grew up in privileged households, got the opportunity to study wherever we wanted and chose a career that we liked. Not that this particular woman wasn't like that too, she probably wears the scarf for religious reasons and not because she was forced to. But I started thinking about gender inequality that affect women's chances of even getting a decent education. They might want to study but their family forces them to marry young and stay at home, This still happens in India, Pakistan and other middle eastern countries. They might not even get to finish high school. Maybe they have internet access and they see this free course and decide to take it. Maybe they study in secret anyway. These are real challenges that they face and me saying that 'I find it challenging to be a working mom in a male dominated industry' seems very petty. Rather than complaining or being offended when someone is being sexist, I want to think of such women. They should inspire us to try harder and push ourselves towards where we want to go. Whatever we are struggling about, we should dedicate our efforts to these women.
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