Truth, (Social) Justice (and the American Way?)

Opening Talk at First Workshop for Women in Cybersecurity
https://sites.google.com/a/vt.edu/cyberw2017/home
at ACM CCS 2017
30 October 2017

The paper (loosely) associated with this talk is here:
https://www.cs.virginia.edu/evans/pubs/cyberw2017/

Transcript

1. Truth, Social Justice (and the American Way?) David Evans University of Virginia 1st Workshop for Women in Cyber Security (CyberW) 30 October 2017 ACM CCS, Dallas TX www.cs.virginia.edu/evans
2. Fallen Allies…
3. 2 I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them. Lawrence H. Summers NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce, 2005 So, congratulations, everybody, and I hope – I hope – I hope – I really do hope there is nothing holding you back, especially not monsters like me. Sir Tim Hunt (Nobel Prize) Women in Science Lunch Science Journalists 2015 Satya Nadella Grace Hopper Conference 2014 It's not really about asking for the raise but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along.
4. 3 I have fought against negative stereotypes. Microsoft’s Massively Empowered Classroom
5. 4 I have successfully fought against negative stereotypes!
6. I led the creation of an Interdisciplinary Major in Computer Science degree program that is 40% women (70 women to graduate this year).
7. plug book dori-mic.org A Tragicomic Tale of Combinatorics and Computability for Curious Children of All Ages The BEST babies' book about computational universality I've read. Scott Aaronson I’ve written a theoretical computer science book featuring a female protagonist!
8. Some Uncomfortable Truths 7
9. 8 Women and Men are Different
10. Women and Men are Different 9 maybe even in ways that effect propensity to have successful careers in computer security research
13. Women and Men are Different 12 We should understand, celebrate and take advantage of differences, not pretend they don’t exist. Differences between individuals within a group dwarf the differences between group averages.
14. Underrepresentation is Not Necessarily Evidence of Discrimination or Unfairness
15. 10% 12% 11% 6% 5% 5%
16. Percent of professionally active nurses that are men 10% 12% 11% 6% 5% 5%
17. Computer Science Percent of Majors who are Women Physical Sciences Medicine Law 2.000 total CS degrees in 1970 (0.4% of all BA/BS) 47,000 total CS degrees in 2011 (2.7% of all BA/BS) 42,337 total CS degrees in 1986 (4.2%)
18. Most Convincing Evidence of Discrimination average ∈ ≥ average( ∉ ) ⊂ Success Population
19. Most Convincing Evidence of Discrimination average ∈ ≥ average( ∉ ) ⊂ Success Population Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult. Charlotte Whitton
20. Token Representation is Counter-Productive
21. Committee Tokens 20
25. Women Men Invited to PC 27 170 Declined Invitation 10 43 Decline Rate 37.0% 25.3%
26. Two Modest Requests 25
27. Request #1: What is a gender-neutral replacement for “ninja”?
29. Request #2: (Senior Women) Make it okay for early-career women to talk about their children!
30. I will have served my purpose if I have provoked thought on this question and provoked the marshalling of evidence to contradict what I have said. But I think we all need to be thinking very hard about how to do better on these issues and that they are too important to sentimentalize rather than to think about in as rigorous and careful ways as we can. That’s why I think conferences like this are very, very valuable. Lawrence H. Summers 2005 NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce
31. David Evans University of Virginia evans@virginia.edu www.cs.virginia.edu/evans