Increasing Gender Diversity in Tech - International Women's Day 2016

On this International Women's Day, Angie will talk about gender parity in technology, entrepreneurship and business -- and how to reach for it. From companies (recruiting, retaining and advancing women), to individuals perspective (as mentee, mentor, parent, colleague, friend), she will provide research-based tips and tricks for bringing women into the fold. First, she will go over why things are the way they are now -- and how to move toward the future of gender equality.

About the speaker: Angie Chang is the VP of Strategic Partnerships & Mentorship at Hackbright Academy, where she focuses on Strategic Partnerships. Hackbright Academy runs a 12-week accelerated engineering fellowship exclusively for women quarterly in San Francisco. In 2008, she started Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners to network women in technology. Dinners are sponsored by companies including Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and Palantir. Prior to that, she co-founded Women 2.0, a media company which promotes women in high-growth, high-tech entrepreneurship. She was named in Fast Company's 2010 "Most Influential Women in Technology"​ and more recently Business Insider named her one of "30 Most Important Women Under 30 In Tech". She has been invited by the U.S. State Department to speak on women's high-tech, high-growth entrepreneurship in the West Bank, Switzerland and Germany. Angie has held positions in product management and web/UI production at various Silicon Valley startups. She holds a B.A. in English and Social Welfare from UC Berkeley.

Transcript

1. IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE: PRACTICAL INTERVENTIONS FOR INCREASING DIVERSITY ANGIE CHANG VP PARTNERSHIPS & MENTORSHIP HACKBRIGHT ACADEMY 2016 INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
2. MARCH IS WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH This year’s theme on 3/8 for International Women’s Day is “pledge for parity” – help accelerate gender parity in tech!
3. PARITY Wikipedia defines parity as the state or condition of being equal, especially in regard status or pay. Each of us can be a leader within our own sphere of influence and commit to taking action to accelerate gender parity.
4. MEDIA REPRESENTATION
5. ABOUT YOUR SPEAKER In the past decade, launched organizations for women in tech: •  Women 2.0 – co-founder, editor-in-chief, board member (‘06-’13) •  Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners – founder (‘08-present) •  Hackbright Academy – growth & partnerships (‘13-present) Started Women 2.0 with co-founders in 2006. (pic: 2007, Women 2.0 Conference @ CNET) Started Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners (pic: 2008, Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner @ Google) Started at Hackbright Academy in 2012. (pic: 2014, Zoe Kay working at New Relic)
6. DIVERSITY STATS PUBLICIZED IN 2014 10-20% tech workers are women.
7. IS THIS NORMAL? Silicon Valley and programmers =! guys
8. WOMEN IN TECH IN THE NEWS… 2016 survey in Silicon Valley showed: •  60% of women in tech reported unwanted sexual advances. •  88% experienced clients/colleagues addressing questions to male peers Full report at ElephantInTheValley.com trolls. doxxing. rape threats over Twitter.
9. WOMEN AT WORK, DAILY. Office politics are trickier for women than men: > Women have to prove themselves over and over. > Women have to navigate a tightrope between being too masculine and too feminine. > Having children just compounds both those problems. > Gender bias often ends up creating highly freighted relationships among women themselves. All of these challenges spawn unique, daily obstacles for women.
10. WHY DIVERSITY MATTERS. Numerous studies demonstrate having a diverse team (management, BOD) makes smart business sense. A 2011 study found that companies with the most women board directors out- performed others (16% return on sales, 26% return on invested capital). - See “Why Diversity Matters” by Catalyst
11. COMPUTING HISTORY (OR HER-STORY) Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) is recognized as the world’s first computer programmer. She wrote a series of instructions for the analytical engine – the first computer algorithm! Ada forecasted the use of the engine for more than just computing #s -THE FIRST PROGRAMMER!-
12. MEET GRACE HOPPER - POPULARIZED Grace Hopper (1906-1992) led the team that created the first computer language compiler, which led to the creation of COBOL. The Anita Borg Institute Celebration of Women in Computing is named after Grace Hopper in 1994. “BUG”
13. THE FIRST “COMPUTERS” ENIAC Programmers (~1945) had answered ads that said: “Wanted: Women With Degrees in Mathematics” and learned to program the ENIAC machine - computing missile trajectory in 15 seconds (whereas human computers would have spent weeks to calculate the same). WERE WOMEN
14. DO WE ACCEPT THE STATUS QUO? Born into gender stereotypes and cultural expectations, do we accept the status quo?
15. DO WE ACCEPT THE STATUS QUO? Born into gender stereotypes and cultural expectations, do we accept the status quo?
16. PROBLEMATIC “PIPELINE ISSUE” The problem with citing the “pipeline issue” of lack of women in engineering is that it removes individual commitment.
17. PROBLEMATIC “PIPELINE ISSUE” The problem with citing the “pipeline issue” of lack of women in engineering is that it removes individual commitment.
18. HOW TO PERSONALLY CHANGE THE RATIO Who can help change the gender ratio in tech: •  senior executives (CTOs, CEOs) & founders of startups! •  coworkers, friends & family GoDaddy CTO Elissa Murphy (former Yahoo VP engineering) Redfin CTO Bridget Frey (former Lithium director of engineering) Slack CEO Stuart Butterfield (former Flickr co-founder)
19. NOT HIRING FOR “FIT” Hiring shouldn’t be for “fit”. /*no comment */ via allmalepanels.tumblr.com GitHub engineering manager February Keeney
20. CREATE AN INCLUSIVE CULTURE What can you do to help? Make your work environment inclusive, not stereotypically geeky and expecting an all-male environment. Consider this in cases of tech office spaces and in interviewing: •  Geek memorabilia is exclusionary for many women. •  Art and posters on walls, coffee mugs and magazines, plants… •  Naming rooms “breakup room”, “bromance chamber”: not OK
21. MENTOR AND SPONSOR WOMEN! Mentorship and sponsorship are important to bring women up in the workplace. Volunteer and give back by: •  Mentoring: providing professional guidance. •  Sponsoring: advocating for women from a position of authority. Pay it forward by volunteering as a MENTOR:
22. MALE ALLIES, SPONSORSHIP How to be a male ally for women in technology? Intuit VP Vinay Pai shares how the organization identified and sponsored technical women, with great results in two years and more to come! Check out linkedin.com/pulse/how-male-ally-women-technology-vinay-pai “Reflect on your own team and what you can do to join our small — but mighty— group of male allies!” Vinay Pai Alan Eustace Turner Bohlen Mark Zuckerberg Intuit VP, Dev Platform Google SVP, Knowledge MIT Startup Bootcamp Facebook CEO
23. BE A GOOD ALLY TO WOMEN How to be a good ally to women: •  Understand your privilege. •  Learn to listen. •  Notice how different women face different problems. •  Use language of respect and equality. •  Learn the power of calling out injustices that don’t necessarily impact you. •  CTO Sarah Allen’s talk for hack.summit() 2016 has an example of how to be an ally: fast-forward the YouTube video to about 15 minutes into the talk for the Sasha Laundy (pictured) story! Get started: geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Allies
24. BIAS There are well-documented differences in how men and women are perceived: •  Female voices are perceived as less logical and less persuasive than male voices. •  Women are perceived negatively for being too assertive. •  Code contributions on April 1, 2015 on GitHub… Training women to LEAN IN (ie. negotiate better, be more assertive) is not enough to solve this problem. If tech culture is going to change, everyone needs to change, especially men and leaders. Hat tip Rachel Thomas, Hackbright instructor and author of:
25. YOUR MOVE. To counter bias, we have to work a little harder to keep women in tech. No wonder 41% of women working in tech eventually end up leaving the field, versus 17% of men. •  Don’t rely on self-nominations or self-evaluations (ie. Google) •  ____________________________________________ •  ____________________________________________ •  ____________________________________________
26. DURING RECRUITING: WATCH THE LANGUAGE! Audit your company website, especially job descriptions, for neutral language. Some suggestions: •  No war language: This means no “crushing”, “killing” or “ninjas”. •  Try cutting words like “guru” and “expert” out of rhetoric. •  Avoid extreme modifiers: This means no “best of the best”, “world-class” or “off-the-charts”. •  Consider that anyone who has been raised/socialized to downplay their expertise and not “toot their own horn” will be less likely to characterize themselves in these ways, even when very highly qualified.
27. TRY THIS LANGUAGE INSTEAD: •  Do you seek an “aggressive, hard-driving” person, or a “motivated, energetic” person? •  Do you describe the office as “Nerd-filled with shoes optional”, or “interactive and informal”? •  Do you want a “truly innovative” person with “genuine curiosity”? •  Instead of “expert-level”, is this person “highly respected”? One company discovered that changing the job title from “technology manager” to “digital manager” boosted the amount of female applicants by 30%!
28. PARENTS: STEM IS FOR EVERYONE! Move past stereotypical toys. Sign up boys AND girls for STEM activities. You can nurture positive gender stereotypes when talking about play and work. Read STEM magazines with children. Empower.
29. THANK YOU! Thank you for being a part of this important conversation! A rising tide lifts all boats, and we appreciate our allies. Got feedback? Email Angie Chang at a@hackbrightacademy.com or angie@bayareagirlgeekdinners.com Twitter: @thisgirlangie Thanks Evernote for having me for #IWD2016