“Looking in your own backyard” and “fixing the leaky pipes” are key to combating the gender issues in the tech and big data sector, says US businesswoman Melinda Gates.
Gates, who is co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was speaking at the Dreamforce event in San Francisco and opened her presentation by reminiscing about her early days at Microsoft, being the only female among nine men.
She said back then it was a fun and fascinating space to work and when she was in college the amount of females studying computer science was at about 38%, which was on par with the medicine and law study fields. However, while both of those subjects have seen an upswing in females studying, computer science has seen a drop off – to about 17%.
Gates said huge equality gaps are very much still present, such as in political representation, as less than 20% of people in congress are women today. She also mentioned the lack of women in business – noting the lack of women in head roles within the Fortune 500.
Don’t put women in the basement
“The other big glaring hole to me is the tech sector. We have to make sure we get women in this area,” Gates said.
“Everyone is starting to look at the leaky pipeline, it starts at elementary school, then middle, college and even college onto industry. There’s no silver bullet but I think one place to look at is that college entry level.”
Gates said there are a few universities around the country that are making computer science classes welcoming and popular and are adding composites that women are interested in – looking at poverty, policy and mental health. She said by having a set of problems that women gravitate towards naturally, and also making sure there are women teaching the class, are key.
“It’s important to also make sure the environment is not the basement of some engineering building, but it’s the humanities building or out in the auditorium - and that there’s role modelling going on.
“Learning computer science is like learning a new language – you have to keep your self-esteem up.”
Gates said despite the issue of gender being a global issue, with women in some countries not even being registered as being born as it’s not important if they are female – which needs to change – it’s also vital people look closer to home “in their own backyard” at what is going on. She added that she knows from a business perspective that what is measured, is what is looked at and worked on, so if women aren’t even being properly measured and accounted for then is has to start here.
Avoiding past mistakes
She said we need a diverse workforce working across technology, adding that women weren’t sitting at the table when the Constitution of the United States was penned in 1789, which led to a crusade to enshrine women's rights and it took a long time to move on from.
She said where the industry is going with artificial intelligence and data is astronomical, but if women aren’t at the table, the mistakes made before will be prevalent and will cause major problems down the track
Gates also questioned why artificial intelligence (AI) systems, such as Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana needed to be female - linkin into the 'women are the assistants' stereotype.
“Diversity has to be rich so all the data and AI we are using and extracting works for everyone,” she said.
“The data we are putting in the system has to works for everybody as we are all part of society,” she added. “It’s absolutely about inclusion.”
Gates added that transparency gets rid of bias and at her company they keep the recruitment process open until they have a good representation of female applicants. She also said she is looking at “blind recruiting”, whereby they don’t look at what college the applicant may have come from.
The gender diversity issue within the advertising world has long plagued the space, but this year several new industry specific initiatives launched. In Australia The Agency Circle, a group and charter designed to turn the gender and broader diversity debate into action and change, launched.
Globally, in what is being deemed as a historical move, DDB, BBDO, McCann and JWT joined in the Free the Bid movement. The initiative, created by director Alma Har’el, aims to break what it calls a vicious gender bias cycle across adland. Har’el says the problem is that at the bidding stage, ad agencies typically present three directors per film/ad spot. In doing so most women don’t get a chance to build competitive reels after years of gender bias – and the ad agencies end up with three male directors’ bids.
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